Light the Way Festival returns to Olive Branch
When thousands look heavenward as fireworks light up the Fourth of July sky Friday night in Olive Branch, organizers of the music festival that leads up to the fireworks show hope the view toward heaven has another purpose beyond sparkling entertainment.
For the third straight year, the Springfield, Missouri-based ministry known as the Light the Way Festival brings top-notch Christian music to the Olive Branch City Park football field. Gates for the one-day festival will open at 3 p.m. on Friday and music will start at 4 p.m., with the city’s fireworks show ending the festivities that night.
About 14,000 people filled the park last July 5-6 weekend for Light the Way, a ministry started by John Wilson, who battled drug and alcohol addiction while involved in the music industry until he was saved after promoting his first Christian music festival “as a joke,” he said.
Artists who will take the City Park stage Friday will be CAIN, Seph Schlueter, and Aaron Cole.
A Clear Bag Policy will be in effect for the free music festival and fireworks event and a significant police presence will be available for safety.
This is the third year for Light the Way to have a summer event in Olive Branch, the second around the city’s Fourth of July celebration.
The first one, in 2023, was a two-day festival held in mid-June, but it had to deal with severe weather that struck the county. The next year, the festival returned to City Park, again as a two-day festival but this time during Independence Day weekend, on July 5-6.
Moving this year’s festival to a one-day activity helps maximize city resources during the Independence Day weekend, especially with July 4 being on a Friday.
Wilson said how Light the Way first came to Olive Branch was an example of God closing doors until he came to the place God wanted him to be.
A staff member from sponsor Visible Music College in Memphis first suggested Memphis as a festival site to Wilson, but Wilson said he “wasn’t feeling Memphis was the spot.”
Southaven, with its outdoor BankPlus Amphitheater, was next suggested, but again Wilson felt the doors not opening to place the festival there.
Wilson’s Visible Music College contact then suggested Wilson check out Olive Branch, where the contact lived, and that resulted in a visit with Mayor Ken Adams and City Communications Director Jay Nichols.
That’s when the doors started to open instead of close.
“They’re like, ‘what do we need to make this happen?’” Wilson said. “It’s just a chain of different connections and having the city be our boots on the ground. It’s one of the situations of, ‘this is where we are supposed to be.’”
The three groups performing on Friday will run a gamut of music genres.
CAIN has been with several shows Light the Way has promoted and Wilson said there’s more with them than just their high-energy country-style vocals and blending, which Wilson said are top-notch.
“What I love about them is their heart,” Wilson said. “They pray. They pray with me, they pray with my team. The moment you get on the property they pray with the team.”
Seph Schlueter is a rising contemporary Christian artist with a number one hit and another song moving up the charts.
Aaron Cole features Christian rap that reaches a younger demographic that “love Christian music and clean lyrics, but they love it in more of a rap or R&B style.”
Olive Branch is the leadoff for what will be three festivals Light the Way will produce this year, ending with a “home” event in September in partnership with Bass Pro Shops at the Thunder Ridge Nature Arena in Ridgedale, Missouri, just outside of Branson. A festival is also planned for Fort Wayne, Indiana. Olive Branch is the only one of the three that will be free of charge, thanks to donors and ministry partners.
Light the Way works with a vision and mission to “take church outside the walls,” reaching out to “those who otherwise might not find themselves inside a church and that’s sad,” Wilson said. “It does encourage me that there are more people like that. I’m now doing events that are changing lives forever.”
Learn more about Light the Way by visiting their website.
