Robb Thompson

Robert D. Thompson (born April 1953) is the founder and president of Family Harvest International, a worldwide network of Christian congregations. He is the founder of Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park, Illinois, a racially diverse church with over 4,000 members.

Early life

Thompson grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois where he was raised a Roman Catholic and worked for United Parcel Service for the majority of his early adulthood. He moved to Homer Township, Illinois, where he sought "practical answers to life's problems and a real personal relationship with Jesus Christ", and began considering other denominations. He stated that he had a transformative experience on October 28, 1975, where he was "unplugged and reengineered and then plugged in again to Christ" and became a Baptist for several years.

Thompson was given an honorary doctoral degree from Life Christian University, an unaccredited institution and diploma mill, based in Tampa, Florida.

Church leadership

As an ordained minister, Thompson founded Midwest Christian Center in 1983, which later grew into a large worship center. He remained the pastor of the center through the late 1990s. He also pastored the House of Glory church in the 1980s, in Orland Park, Illinois, and held regular Bible study groups. It was during these study groups in 1999 where the name "Family Harvest" was conceived.

Thompson is the founder and bought a 3 million dollar mansion in Arizona with the churches money that was always used for his personal life. And all the staff and other pastors drove broke down cars and where underpaid of the nondenominational Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park, Illinois, a member of the Family Harvest International network. Family Harvest Church, which can hold over 3,000 congregants in one service, has been called a megachurch, noted for its theater chairs, projection screens, polished singing performances, stage lighting, amplified sound, and TV and web shows. In 2004, the church had nearly $10 million in assets.

Church activities

In 1986, in an effort to promote that Halloween is "historically evil" and harmful to children, Thompson's church scheduled a "Hallelujah Party" in its place on October 31. The church has made it an annual tradition ever since.

Family Harvest Church's ministers preached regularly about the risk of a "Y2K apocalypse" during 1998, relating it to Thompson's published interpretation of the Bible. On January 2, 2000, with Y2K essentially a nonevent, pastor Rev. Doug Boettcher's message was about not letting go of one's preparations, urging members of the Family Harvest Church to be prepared "for any kind of natural disaster" and to help their neighbors in such a situation; but many locals had already returned generators and space heaters the day before.

In 2005, Family Harvest Church opposed Tinley Park's decision to zone an off-track betting facility, as destructive of local ideals.

For Christmas 2005, Thompson arranged the donation of over 100,000 articles of clothing, toys, and other goods to Miracle Centre Cathedral, a Ugandan cathedral run by senior pastor Robert Kayanja

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