Brandon Lake vividly remembers the night a group of arena security guards accepted Christ during his Summer Worship Nights Tour with Phil Wickham.
It was 2023, the first year of the tour, and the two singers were on stage in the final moments of a concert, having asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they wanted to “start a relationship with Jesus or to rededicate their lives,” Lake says. Suddenly, Lake noticed a commotion in the audience, to his left.
“What had happened was when we gave this invitation to raise your hand if you want to say yes to Jesus, apparently a line of security guards all raised their hand,” Lake told Christian Headlines.
Christians in the audience surrounded the security guards and helped them take the next step on their spiritual journey.
“Many believers there that night ran forward and celebrated with the security guards,” he added. “It was just really cool. Because that's why we do this. It's not to entertain. It's to see people have an encounter with God.”
Tickets went on sale March 22 for the 2024 Summer Worship Nights tour, which will hit 17 cities and again feature Lake and Wickham, with special guest Hulvey.
“People are going to get healed and set free on these nights,” Lake said. “...But the main goal is salvation.”
The two award-winning singers joined together on last year’s Summer Worship Nights tour as fans of each other’s work.
“To sing his songs and to team up with him and to go out as a unified battlefront against darkness and against everything people are going through is a joy,” Wickham told Christian Headlines.
Wickham, too, has favorite moments from the 2023 tour. Following one of the stops on the tour, Wickham received a message on Instagram from a woman who brought her husband, who was not a Christian, to the concert.
“[She] said, ‘Hey, I've been praying for my husband since we got married 20-something years ago, that he would come to Jesus. And that night – thank you for giving that moment [of invitation] – because that night he raised his hand. And everything's different now,’” Wickham recounted.
On another night, the head of security for the Summer Worship Nights Tour was saved. Wickham described the individual as a tough “military man” who traveled with the artists but himself was not a Christian.
“And then a few weeks in, he came to both of us,” Wickham said. “He just said, ‘Hey, there's something different going on here. And I didn't know what to do in the moment. But when you guys were saying if you want to follow Jesus, I wanted to say I want to follow Jesus.’”
The man accepted Christ.
“Now he's following Jesus,” Wickham said.
“That's a sign to me of like, ‘Thanks, God, you're in this,’” he added.
The story about the head of security still makes Lake cry, he said.
“God's transforming families,” Lake said. “God’s moving”
The man told Lake, “I can't wait to get home and tell my son that I'm a Christian now.”
Wickham and Lake say they’re praying for similar encounters with Christ during the 2024 tour.
“If you get me and Brandon there, it's going to be a party,” Wickham said. “You know, there's a lot of joy, a lot of jumping around. But really what was on our hearts from the beginning was just – we want to see people come to Jesus, and we want to see hearts renewed in Him.”
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Terry Wyatt/Stringer
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
