Harvey is one of ten children, the only one to graduate from high school in his family. He surrenders to full-time ministry and manages to work his way through a Christian college. He marries Norma but isn’t accepted at seminary, so he becomes a lay minister in his church then is ordained – with difficulty – through equivalency ordination. As a pastor of several churches, he reluctantly visits relatives of church members in prison and thus begins a jail ministry to which he devotes himself.