Given the amount of press coverage that Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta has been receiving over the past few days, I thought I would weigh in with my own thoughts…
I graduated from Prairie Bible Institute in April 2009. I have mixed emotions about being a PBI grad; on one hand, the friends I made and the education I received are priceless. On the other hand, the experiences I had I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
I moved my family to Three Hills in December 2005 to begin my Prairie journey. Over the course of the next three and a half years, we lived in three houses. The first house belonged to Prairie; we moved because of mould problems. When I approached Maintenance about fixing the problems, we were told repeatedly they couldn’t do anything because “Administration has bigger priorities”.
The next place was a trailer owned by some people from our church. We moved because we couldn’t afford to live there long term.
The last place we lived was another Prairie house. We took some of our savings, borrowed some money from family, and spent several weeks putting new flooring into the house and painting the walls. However, this place had a problem with the hot water supply. The hot water came from the dorms, and “intermittent” would be a generous description. The summer we moved into this place, I had a job working for the Town of Three Hills, and among my duties was working at the landfill. I would come home, change out of my work clothes, wash my hands and then start running a bath with just hot water. Then I would sit down to have dinner with my family. By the time dinner was done, I would usually have enough tepid water to have a bath.
What does this have to do with the present situation at Prairie? I am not for a second suggesting that having a tepid bath is on par with systemic child abuse…
…however, when I began talking with Maintenance about fixing the hot water problem, I was given the “Administration has bigger priorities” response. I had to find out what priorities could be bigger than fulfilling the school’s legal obligations under the Alberta Residential Tenancies Act, so I began asking the Administration (at that time, under the “leadership” of Jon Ohlhauser) what could be more important than obeying the law…
(Am I being inflammatory? Damn right I am. I was inflammed and still am…)
…The first answer I was given was “We have plans to build new houses in the future.” Did I mention that we had just had our third child? Wrong answer to give me… How is a family with three young children supposed to survive without a steady supply of hot water? First world problems, I know.
Second answer I was given was “Consider this preparation for the mission field.” So if any mission agencies are wondering why they can’t recruit missionaries any more, it’s because we’ve been there, done that.
I finally asked if the school couldn’t see fit to supply these families with hot water, I would have to go to Alberta Health to see what they thought. That’s when I was told, “If you do that, you’re putting a lot of student families on the street. Plus, you’d be a bad Christian for getting the authorities involved.” Next thing I hear, people are telling me that certain administration officials are saying that I’m “doing the work of Satan” by questioning the authorities that God has placed above me.
(as an aside, Maintenance finally put hot water tanks into our houses. I don’t know who finally made that decision, but I can hazard a guess as to who it wasn’t…)
My point is, when I left in 2009, the attitude of “don’t ask questions that go against the administration, and don’t tell anyone outside of the Prairie community when something is amiss” was still alive and well.
…Don’t ask, don’t tell…
My belief is that this attitude of “don’t ask, don’t tell” contributed to the systemic abuse that we are beginning to hear about in the media today. Even as recently as two years ago, if you spoke out against administration, you were immediately put down. If you talked to anyone outside the Prairie community, you were driven out. I know former staff and students who were “spiritually abused” for speaking out.
I spent time in the military when I was younger, and even the military wouldn’t use the tactics that were employed to silence me and others.
And I was only complaining about hot water. Those who have more serious complaints…
This is Shawn’s wife speaking. . . Believe it or not, this is only one of a very long list of stories of the housing issues we had. Every one was treated with the same unprofessional, sweep it under the carpet attitude. We were flabbergasted!
Having watched you and many others go through this kind of “unchristian-like” garbage, it doesn’t surprise me that these issues have surfaced. It happens in all sorts of areas where the ugly truth is burried and never really dealt with openly and honestly. I must say I am pleased with the new administration tackling the crap their predicessors were too chicken to takle. There is a lot of healing that needs to happen and only God can do that. Denying culpability never got anyone anywhere.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I was a staff kld and could have told you what would happen if you asked a question from when I was there in the 70′s.
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I could not agree more with Joyce Anderson. Doing to the least of these, you have done it to the Lord. Except the Lord always gets the cold water and mouldy houses. Amen, and I don’t want to go to a heaven filled with this type of people.
roy ruser here a grad of 1990
i went from 1985 -90 i didn’t live on campus but knew many who did, i went totally on faith seen God provide over and over again, 3 times i wanted to quit. but remembered God had called me there, we had water for me and my family, but i went to Albania in 1993, if you want water get up at 3 Am. the water maybe comes on for an hour, ice cold and fuel rationing doesn’t allow for heating, so i went to Greece bought a 500 gal. tank and a toilet float valve rigged it up, we had water and could share, we all go through difficult things it’s how we handle them that matters, the world looks at us, how do they see us handling things, heck we are supposed to have someone to talk to and listen to, that is Jesus, he says my sheep hear my voice, sorry against popular christen teaching, Jesus can talk, think about pretty ridicules, if God created our mouth and ears and he can’t speak to us as he did to many, the true problem is were not listening, now don’t get me wrong we all mess up, me a lot! But guys, girls this is not our home, God won’t let us go through more then he has created us to bear, instead of complaining why don’t we start praying for the power of Jesus to flow through us like it did in the disciples so we can see the cripples come out of wheel chairs, the blind seeing, if we could get so concerned for others, who are really going through tough things in life and have no answers, we have The answer, what are we going to do with it, personally i don’t like going through tough things but every time i do, God brings someone along, i am able to say this is how God brought me through, and he can do it for you, look what Jesus went through for us, so we can grow, bitter or better, C.T.Studd back about 1910 walk away from being a world famous cricketeer and a 1/2 million dollars, to go to Africa, it wasn’t like it is today, he said “if Jesus be God and died for me than no sacrifice can be to great for me to make for him” there are many dying out there with-ought Jesus, if we truly know him as our Lord and Savour then he left us here for a reason, that is to reach them, maybe we need to stop playing church and be obedient, right now i got a small bachelor apt.coming from a nice big house, a bit difficult but thanking God, i started here with almost nothing, lost a lot, if i get depressed all i have to do is think of the guy or girl living on the street, not enough to eat, not enough to keep warm, i live in a palace in comparison, o ya if the leadership messed up God will deal with them we know we don’t get away with sin, but in his timing not ours, i am no better than any one, i only go to heaven because of the blood and righteousness of Jesus, he left us here to bring many to him, he loves all his creation, that is every one is made in his image, but the question is do we love them enough to tell them the truth, so they won’t go to hell
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate the thoughts, and I whole heartedly agree that this world is not our home. But God put us here for a reason, and that reason does not allow us to sit back and do nothing while bad things happen to good people. I know that the worst living conditions in Canada are better than the best living conditions in most of the world, but that is no justification for a Bible college to break the law.