In 1963, Brother Syd Finley made an informal appeal to Bishop Joseph Gomez, the then presiding prelate, to establish an African Methodist Episcopal Church in DuPage County. His daughter was getting married and there was no AME Church to host the wedding in the county. It was not until some years later, under the leadership of Bishop Hubert Nelson Robinson that a formal plea was made before the Chicago Annual Conference of the AME Church. On Wednesday, September 12, 1979, Syd and Mary Lou Finley and community leader Ernest Gibson, made a plea and had a private meeting with Bishop Robinson where an organizational and financial support process for a church was established. On Sunday, September 16, 1979, at the closing of the Chicago Annual Conference, Bishop Robinson appointed Reverend Donald Harwell to organize the mission church.

Almost immediately, the first organizational meeting was held September 20, 1979. In attendance from the AME Church Conference were the Reverends Emmanuel Leak, Charles Spivey, and Wilfred Reid who were instrumental in the planning process.