HarvestFest History

The beginning of HarvestFest goes back to the turn of the new millennium when a number of Christians began to wonder why Saskatoon did not have any inter-church mission conferences that were taking place in other parts of Canada.

Saskatoon has many evangelical churches in and around the city and numerous missionaries have been sent out in the past to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the “nations”. It seemed that some of the churches were not paying much attention to the Great Commission.

With this in mind, a group of people planned and organised a missions/prayer conference called, “Heart for the Nations”. Although attendance was not high, it was a good gathering as people heard about and prayed for needs around the world. Since a number of those on the conference planning committee left for service in other countries the conference was not held again.

In 2006 a group of Christians gathered to discuss the possibility of a Missions Fest type of conference in Saskatchewan. The group met over a number of months and many good ideas were shared but finally decided that it was not the right time for such a step of faith due to lack of people committed to make this happen.

In 2008, one of the people who had been involved in the previous efforts to get something started in the Saskatoon area wondered, “If this was not the right time to plan an inter-church missions event, when will the time ever be right?” and he approached Christ-Like Ministries, a small group of Christians who had been led to start annual revival meetings in the Sask Valley area a number of years before. Those meetings had evolved into evangelistic meetings and then into mission meetings with a special focus on Mexico. This group of Christians was ready to widen their focus to include many different mission organizations working in places around the world. 

The annual meetings organized by them became the foundation of an area-wide missions conference. A planning committee was set up to plan this expanded conference, which was to be called HarvestFest 09. The group chose to use the same venue, the Brian King Centre in Warman, Sask., for the first conference.

This name reflects the fact that Jesus called his followers to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers to gather the harvest of lost men and women. Also, by including the year in the name of the conference, the group indicated their desire to see this become an annual event.

Dave Ginther
Coordinator - HarvestFest 2011