Learn more about HBC

The Debt - LINK

The following is the story of how Harvest Bible Chapel went from being a church flush with equity to a church burdened by approximately $65 million of debt (please see The Documents for all supporting materials).

In 2003, Harvest Bible Chapel was a flourishing, single-site church located in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.  At that time, Harvest had been in their facility for eight years, and according to the leadership of the church, their mortgage was nearly paid off, as they had built up approximately $10 million in equity in the property.

Unfortunately, by February of 2003, things were beginning to change.  With the limitations of physical space pressing down upon Harvest, they were searching for a new property upon which to build a single-site church.  However, when another nationally known ministry decided not to accept the donation of the old Safety Kleen corporate headquarters in Elgin, Illinois, Harvest stepped in and gratefully accepted the donation.  


With this property now in hand, James MacDonald cast a bold new vision for his church to significantly expand the scope and reach of his personal platform. In the opinion of the former elders we spoke with, this was the moment in time when they noticed a marked change in the character and ambition of the man. This new, multi-site ministry model was predicated upon financial considerations.  Had the leadership elected to pursue a single-site model based in Elgin, they were predicting that upwards of one-third of the congregation in Rolling Meadows would not follow the church out to the new site and would presumably not give to the build out campaign.
So, this season in Harvest’s history would now be inaugurated by first making material improvements to the Rolling Meadows campus.  Following that, the recently donated property in Elgin would be retro-fitted to accommodate a school, church offices, and a newly added 2500 seat sanctuary, the “shell” of which was capable of being expanded to 7500 seats.  Lastly, the recently donated camp in Michigan would also be built out, in the hopes of bringing MacDonald’s vision of a fully-realized church camp to fruition.

For this purpose, the leadership of Harvest Bible Chapel began to roll out the Seize the Opportunity capital campaign, asking members of the congregation to sacrificially give $2o million over the next three years, above and beyond what families typically gave through their regular tithes and offerings.  It should be noted that Harvest was prepared, at that time, to incure up to $30 million in debt.  This decision was based upon a belief that this mortgage would be well within their financial capabilities to payoff in a reasonable amount of time.  Assurances were given to the congregation, both verbally and in writing, that the leadership was not in a hurry to build out and that they would be judicious regarding the finances.  When asked, “Is the church going to borrow more money than the campaign goal,” Harvest responded as follows:

Our leadership is committed to not putting the church in a difficult situation.  We are not in a big hurry.  We want to attempt big things for God and work hard and see what happens, but we are sure not going to put our church in a bad position financially.  You can be very confident about that.

What must be acknowledged without equivocation is that this quote is not a complete refusal to borrow money.  Furthermore, it is also acknowledged that, in 2006, the leadership disclosed that “bridge financing” would be necessary until such time that all of the pledges were fulfilled by the congregation.  Of course, this raises the obvious question as to why “bridge financing” would be needed given the fact that Harvest had already indebted itself through the procurement of loans.  In the end analysis, it is the opinion of these authors that it cannot be construed, even with the most generous of interpretations, that the leadership was disclosing that they were on the doorstep of a journey that would ultimately lead to more than $65 million of debt.

So, the question remains: how did Harvest come to this season of financial crisis?