| PRAIRIE BIBLE INSTITUTE | |
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Bible College / School of Mission Aviation College of Applied Arts & Technology |
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| Motto | To Know Christ and Make Him Known |
| Established | 1922 |
| Type | Private |
| Religious affiliation | Christian |
| Endowment | CDN $3.5 Million |
| President | Mark Maxwell |
| Students | 350 |
| Location | Three Hills, Alberta, Canada |
| Campus | Rural (130 acres or 53 hectares) |
| Colours | blue , Crimson & Orange |
| Nickname | Pilots |
| Affiliations | CCCU, ABHE |
| Website | www.prarie.edu |
Prairie Bible Institute is a Bible college near Three Hills, Alberta. PBI opened on October 9, 1922 on the property of the McElheran family farm.[1] Over the course of its history Prairie's governing board created several other schools including a Correspondence School, a Graduate School (1988–2004) based in Calgary and an extant K-12 Christian school system (1938 to present) in Three Hills. More recently, two sister undergraduate colleges, Prairie School of Mission Aviation in 1992 and the Prairie College of Applied Arts and Technology in 2006, were created by PBI. After restructuring in 2004, Prairie Bible Institute divested itself of about one half of its educational interests, choosing to retain its resident and distance learning Bible College, Aviation School and College of Applied Arts and Technology as its educational focus.
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Prairie Bible Institute's precursor was a local Bible Study group led by J. Fergus Kirk, a central Alberta Presbyterian farmer. L. E. Maxwell, a graduate of Christian and Missionary Alliance Bible Institute in Kansas, was invited to come to Three Hills to develop a structured curriculum.[2] He became the school's principal and later president. After 58 years, Maxwell retired in the spring of 1980 near the age of 85.
Maxwell, the Kirks, the McElherans, and other 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. Although initially wary of outside alliances and influences, PBI was officially incorporated and eventually accredited to grant degrees in divinity through legislative acts [3] [4] and amendments [5] [6] of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Alberta and has conferred associate's degrees and Bachelor degrees to its graduates since 1980. From 1988 to 2004, PBI operated a graduate school and offered Master's degrees at a satellite campus in Calgary. During that same period, PBI reached undergraduate credit and programmic transfer arrangements with The King's University College in Edmonton and the University of Lethbridge in southern Alberta and became accredited in 1997 when the Association for Biblical Higher Education accepted PBI 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 traveled from Viking, Alberta, to Peace River country to establish the Peace River Bible Institute, now located at Sexsmith, near the city of Grande Prairie. 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 fellowship met for more than fifty years in a cavernous auditorium seating 4,300. Remodeled and renamed in 1985, the Maxwell Memorial Tabernacle was Canada's largest religious auditorium. In 2005, the building was demolished so that a new multipurpose facility, The Maxwell Centre, could be built. 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 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. Alumni were influential in the promotion of evangelical churches, especially congregations of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Evangelical Free Church. These, along with other evangelical churches, employed 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.
Prairie Bible Institute now represents one of the most denominationally diversified theological faculties in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities CCCU, with an Anglican priest, a graduate from Westminster Theological Seminary, a Wesleyan, an Anabaptist former pastor, and several nondenominational professors.
Today, Prairie Bible Institute encompasses three post-secondary schools:
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