Update · June 25, 2026 · 6 min read
What God Did in Niagara: Worship in The Wild 2026
Two days at the Fallsview Event Grounds, and what we are carrying forward
On June 19 and 20, 2026, the Fallsview Event Grounds in Niagara Falls filled with people who came for one reason: to lift up the name of Jesus in public, outdoors, where anyone walking past could hear it.
This is our record of it.
Friday night
Doors opened at 6:00 PM. A shofar sounded. Mayor Jim Diodati and Pastor Dave Spadzinski opened the evening, Mike Haines and Calvary Dunnville led worship, and Michael Dow preached.
There is a particular quality to worship outdoors as the light goes. The sound does not bounce back at you off a ceiling — it goes up and out and disappears over the city. Everyone notices it. Nobody quite knows what to do with it except keep singing.
Saturday
Saturday ran from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM and it was full. Souled Out Worship, Michael Gagat, Joshua Vans Coy, Ken Doherty, Pastor Sceon Beverly Brown-Leslie, Fil-Can AG Church International, CIA Worship Team, Nathan J. Trott, Terry Posthumus, Ray Lyell, and Michael Dow again to close.
In the middle of the afternoon, Andrew Perrie shared a testimony. Testimony does something a sermon cannot — it removes the option of treating the Gospel as theory.
The part that does not fit in a schedule
The lineup is the easy thing to write down. What is harder to record is the rest of it: people praying with strangers at the edge of the field, volunteers who arrived at 6:00 AM and left after dark, churches that had never shared a stage standing together, families on blankets, kids running through the grass while their parents wept during a worship set.
Niagara Falls receives twelve to fourteen million visitors a year. Some of the people who heard the Gospel that weekend did not live anywhere near Ontario. They took it home with them.
The people who made it possible
Hotels and restaurants across the Fallsview area stood behind this festival so it could stay free. Volunteers carried equipment, ran hospitality, prayed, welcomed, and cleaned up. Vendors held down tables and had conversations that lasted hours. Sponsors paid for things nobody sees.
None of that shows up in a photo. All of it is why the photos exist.
Where it goes next
Niagara was never meant to be the destination. The next invitation is Jesus Festival Hamilton at Gage Park on September 4-5, 2026, and the wider vision is carried by the Jesus Festival Movement — cities across Canada and beyond gathering the Church, reaching their region, and lifting up Jesus in public.
If something moved in you at the Fallsview Event Grounds, do not let it stay a memory. There are practical next steps in our post on what happens after the festival.
Thank you, Niagara. God willing, we will do this again.