Plainfield church celebrated 25 years of faithfulness to the vision

Harvest Church in Plainfield will celebrate two milestones this weekend.

One is its “Harvest Family Reunion,” which was held Saturday to celebrate the church’s silver anniversary.

In addition, this event marked the first time Harvest has offered in-person worship since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

A 2000 Herald-News story said its pastor and founder Bishop Nolan McCants started Harvest Church Plainfield in 1996 after having a vivid dream, which he shared.

“I was driving along a highway and I saw a field and decided to pull over and stop,” McCants said in the story. I went into the field and began to pray, and, as I prayed, people of all races and backgrounds began coming over the hill and out of the trees around the field. I joined two other men standing in that field and we prayed together.”

McCants also said he felt drawn to starting the church in Plainfield, although he didn’t know why. The story said he had visited Plainfield just once, to visit his former Proviso East High School principal, Jim Waldorf, a school principal in Plainfield at the time.

Finally, simply to get some closure on that dream, McCants drove out to Plainfield and found his “field of dreams” in Plainfield, just off Illinois 126.

“I got out of the car, went into the field, and raised my hands to pray,” McCants said in the story. “I told God that if this was his will, so be it.”

From its very inception, Harvest Church Plainfield was intended to celebrate diversity, McCants said in the story. The church started with just nine people, including McCants and his wife and his wife Gloria. Attendance today is more than 250, according to a news release for the event.

In the release, Archbishop Kirby Clements, McCants’ longtime friend, mentor, and supporter, explained why Harvest has endured when other churches have not.

“He has a delicate sensitivity to the times,” Clements said in the release. “His integrity has been his strength, his ministry transcends race and culture, and he connects the old with the new.”

Clements also said in the release that McCants embraced traditional, digital, and social media to help foster communication and minstry long before the COVID-19 forced many churches to worship virtually.

McCants himself has also published four books, is an award-winning fine arts photographer and gallery owner, entrepreneur (he created a full-service public relations firm at 18 years old, the release said).

He trains and mentors young business leaders and ministers around the world and is also a clothing designer and community activist, the release said..

McCants said in the release that he is looking forward to many more years of service and added, “The Lord sent us, and the Lord has kept us.”

“We have achieved things that we never dreamed possible and continue to experience God’s unfolding vision for the ministry,” McCants said in the release.