Prairie Bible College

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prairie Bible College

Motto:	Building a Passionate Body of Christ
Established:	1922
Type:	Private
Endowment:	CDN $3.5 Million
President:	Dr. Jon Ohlhauser
Students:	475
Location:	Three Hills, Alberta, Canada
Campus:	Rural (130 Acres)
Colours:	blue , Crimson & Orange
Affiliations:	Christian
Website:	www.prarie.edu

Prairie Bible College, incorporated as Prairie Bible Institute (PBI), was opened on October 9, 1922 in a vacant building on the property of the McElheran family farm near the community of Three Hills, Alberta.^[1]

1 History
2 Programs
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

PBI became known as a major missionary training centre with alumni eventually working in more than 110 nations around the globe. Its precursor was a local Bible Study group led by J. Fergus Kirk, a central Alberta Presbyterian farmer. L. E. Maxwell (1895-1984), a graduate of a Christian and Missionary Alliance Bible institute in Kansas, was invited to come to Three Hills to develop a structured curriculum. He readily became the school's dynamic principal and eventual president. After 58 years of teaching, Maxwell retired in the spring of 1980 near the age of 85.

L. E. Maxwell, the Kirks, the McElherans and other visionary local families saw the school grow to attain an enrollment of over 900 students by 1948 and become Canada's largest Bible College, a position it would hold until 1984. Under the authority of an act of the Alberta Legislature, Prairie Bible College has granted Associate and Bachelor degrees since 1980. Although initially wary of outside alliances and influences Prairie reached credit and/or programmic transfer arrangements with The King's University College in Edmonton and the University of Lethbridge in southern Alberta and achieved the status of an accredited institution in 1997 when the Association for Biblical Higher Education accepted Prairie Bible College as a full member.

Ventures initiated by PBI were the Prairie Sunday School Mission, established in 1929, which was subsequently reorganized as the Alberta branch of the Canadian Sunday School Mission. In 1933, at the invitation of Peace River area residents, PBI graduate Walter W. McNaughton biked and hitchhiked from Viking, Alberta to the Peace River country, in the province's north-west, to establish the Peace River Bible Institute (now located at Sexsmith, near the city of Grande Prairie, Alberta). By the 1940s, PBI had founded three general education Christian schools on its Three Hills campus: Prairie Elementary, Prairie Junior High, and Prairie High School. In 2004 these schools were amalgamated as Prairie Christian Academy (PCA) and began to operate independently from Prairie Bible Institute. PCA now exists as one of Alberta's alternative schools under the local public school division.

Another outgrowth of the school was its own campus church - The Prairie Tabernacle Congregation. This local fellowship met for more than fifty years in a cavernous arena-like auditorium seating 4,300. Remodeled and renamed in 1985, the Maxwell Memorial Tabernacle was Canada's largest religious auditorium. In 2005 this building was demolished so that a new multi-purpose facility "The Maxwell Centre" could be erected. The new facility will continue to bear the name of Prairie's founder and, when completed, will house a chapel that will seat 1,200. The Prairie Tabernacle Congregation, however, has purchased its own property and has commenced a project to erect a church independent of the college facilities.

Prairie was one of the first Bible training institutes in Western Canada, with its graduates filling pulpits across Canada's great plains. These alumni have been quite influential in the promotion and advancement of evangelical churches, especially congregations of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Evangelical Free Church. These, along with other denominations, utilized the graduates of Prairie and other rural Bible schools until they were able to establish their own denominational colleges and seminaries with campuses in urban and metropolitan areas of western Canada.

[edit] Programs

Today, Prairie Bible Institute continues as a Canadian centre for Christian higher education that encompasses three post-secondary schools: Prairie Bible College (which offers both resident and distance education courses and programs), Prairie School of Mission Aviation, and - in partnership with Bow Valley College, Olds College and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology - the Prairie College of Applied Arts and Technology.