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PEACE RIVER BIBLE INSTITUTE
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College Update We concluded an amazing school year with some memorable events for our students as well as for the broader PRBI community. Our very first Performing Arts Showcase exceeded our expectations with a packed auditorium of appreciative guests. Our students treated the audience to music, drama, and visual art performances that were entertaining, thoughtprovoking, and spiritually uplifting. It was a joy to connect with so many friends back on campus and for them to witness how God has been working in and through our students. Our nine graduates enjoyed a back-to-normal grad year with a retreat in Jasper, a grad banquet, and commencement service. We were delighted to hear testimony from each one about how Christ transformed their lives and prepared them to serve Him beyond PRBI. Our two tour teams, Highest Call and Earthen Vessels, visited several churches on their eight-day tours in Alberta and British Columbia. We are thankful for their safekeeping and for the churches who welcomed them. These tours allow students to practice and grow their gifts as they are given opportunities to minister. If your church is interested in hosting a team next spring, please let us know.
Summer is a time for some rest and refreshment, but also a time to plan and prepare for the next school year. We are already working on the outdoor Fall Concert scheduled for Friday, September 9. As more information becomes available, we will post it on the PRBI website (www.prbi.edu/fallconcert). Enrolment is strong for the 2022-2023 school year. We expect an increase over the previous year for the first time in many years. Please pray that young people will listen and respond to God’s call on their lives to pursue a Bible College education. Who do you know that you can encourage to attend? You can have a huge impact on a young person’s life by recommending PRBI. In preparation for students returning in September, we are readying ourselves, our courses, and our facilities. We have been doing some landscaping and painting as well as attending to a variety of other projects in order to create a welcoming environment. With the start of our fiscal year on July 1, and the approaching summer months that typically see fewer donations, we are in need of $100,000 in the next couple of months to give us a solid start to a new year of training students to serve the Lord wherever He leads them.
The Power of Multiplication As we think about how to best prepare the next generation to serve in the kingdom of God, we must think in terms of multiplication and not addition. Consider the following example. With Plan A, you add $100 to your savings every day for a month. With Plan B, you put a penny into your savings on the first day, double your input the second day, and continue to double the input for the entire month. Which of these two plans do you think would accumulate more money? If you choose Plan B, you are correct. Plan A would accumulate $3,000, but Plan B grows to more than $5.3 million. Multiplication can lead to exponential growth! The principle of multiplication, however, should not be restricted to financial investments. In the New Testament, we find Paul teaching his disciple Timothy about the principle of multiplication. Paul wrote, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will
Kim Cairns President also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tm 2:2, NIV). The apostle Paul is a notable example of one who passed on his faith to the next generation. He often took emerging leaders with him on his missionary trips, investing his faith into their lives and modeling the practice of discipleship. The apostle’s letters to Timothy and Titus particularly highlight how much he valued passing on what had been entrusted to him. Paul not only added to these developing leaders’ lives, but he also encouraged them to embrace the value of multiplication by investing in others. “The things you have heard me say… entrust to others.” As a strategy for ministry, Paul never thought in terms of addition, he was all about multiplication. I highly doubt that he envisioned the extent of his efforts as the gospel message would one day be embraced and passed on to people of many tongues, tribes, and nations! The word “entrust” suggests the idea of making a deposit. What we
receive, we are to deposit in another life, trusting that it will multiply. Yet Paul is careful to qualify where we should invest, “to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” Paul hopes for a living chain of truth that will extend through the centuries. In the early seventeenth century Dr. Richard Sibbes wrote a little book about Christ called The Bruised Reed. A copy of that book fell into the hands of a tin peddler, who gave it to a boy named Richard Baxter, who became the greatest of Puritan pastors. Baxter wrote, among other things, A Call to the Unconverted, which Philip Doddridge read in the early eighteenth century, and he in turn wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. William Wilberforce read that book, and it so changed his life that he led the fight for the abolition of slavery… Indeed Wilberforce became a huge influence in nineteenth-century British culture and saw the abolition of slavery in Britain just three days before his death. Significantly, Wilberforce has been an inspiration for Charles Colson and the organization he founded, Prison Ministries. 1 PRBI believes in multiplication! One of our core values states, “Empowered by the Holy Spirit, our task is to
train students in the life changing principles of God’s Word...” Building into students’ lives the transforming principles of Scripture is a worthy task, but if this is all we do then we have settled for simple addition and limited our impact. However, our value fully stated is, “Empowered by the Holy Spirit, our task is to train students in the life changing principles of God’s Word so that they will be equipped to pass on those principles to others wherever Christ leads them.” At PRBI, we are well situated to train students in the principles of multiplication, but it is not only about numbers. We invest in a student’s growth and maturity so that they will be able to reproduce themselves in others. Besides matters of character and spirituality, we are training students in how to help others discover the truths of God’s Word using a simple but effective method of Bible study. Of course, multiplication only happens as the Holy Spirit empowers an obedient discipler to invest in the life of a faithful student who will do the same. Will you join us in the investment plan? Please pray for effective disciplers and faithful students! We will leave the increase to God.
[1] Hughes, R. Kent. 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000, p:193-194.
Your Will can be a love letter
Creating a Will can be like writing a love letter. Thinking through your options, making good choices and considering those you love can say more to them than you may think. Having your things in order is one way to let your family and heirs know that you love them enough to not burden them with making decisions on their own during their time of grief.
What will your love letter say? Will it share your hopes and dreams for those you love? Will it speak of your faith and values? Will it share your heart for generosity? Our partners at Advisors with Purpose would like to help. Please contact them today to set up a time to speak with an advisor who will help you create a plan for your Will that ensures it will be the love letter you want it to be. It is free, confidential, there is no obligation and no one will ever sell you anything.
You can email them today at plan@advisorswithpurpose.ca
God’s Truth My story is about how God’s truth moved from my head to also be in my heart, and how He helped me to recognize the areas where I was believing lies. Before coming to PRBI, I was constantly telling myself lies. I would intentionally tell myself these lies because it helped me feel as though I had control. It made me feel like I could protect myself. If I was going to get hurt in this world, why not be the one to hurt myself? For so long, fear has been such a crippling and oppressive force in my life. It has controlled me and gotten the best of me. This year, as God was unravelling the lies, it really came out that I was using my fear to try to protect myself. Last year, I was so emotionally broken. I could no longer ignore the lies that I told to protect myself. I had to deal with them. I tried to remove the lies from my life on my own, but it didn’t work. I came to recognize that only the Holy Spirit could convince me of God’s truth so I began to invite Him in. He
Melody Hagstrom BBS Graduate brought transformation and started sanctifying my heart and helping me to believe the truth, His truth. I learned that my own means of selfsufficiency, my own means of coping in this world, were insufficient, but that God is wholly sufficient. So, throughout this year, I have been trusting that God is enough. In everything I go through, He is enough to help me and to sustain me and to heal me. His truth is so much greater than the lies and so much greater than the fear. I have experienced so much freedom and I’ve been able to surrender those things and live my life in a new way. My hope is to use these truths to help other people in my community find the healing that I have found. I desire to bring them to Jesus and help them to have a moment with the Holy Spirit in which He reveals His truth to them and brings healing to them as only He can. I want to walk with people and share how sufficient Christ is, because He is enough in our brokenness.
For I Know the Plans “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” Those were the words of my six year old when I had to tell her that her grandma, my mom, had passed away. Through tears and grief, the magnitude of these six words stuck with me. “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” I thought to myself, “Neither was I, little one. Neither was I.” As I reflected back on these words, it began to sink in that as humans there are many times that this statement will ring true in our ears. Whether it is the death of a loved one, a diagnosis from a doctor, or a financial crisis, the words, “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” can echo through our minds and resonate in our hearts. As humans, we are often woefully
Josh Rigby Dean of Men
unprepared for what life throws at us, but this is not the case with our God. Jeremiah 29:11 shows us a side of our God that I find incredibly comforting: “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” I love how this passage starts: “For I know the plans that I have…” In other words, I, your God, am prepared for this moment. This statement was made in the context of God’s people having just learned that they were going to be facing seventy years of exile in Babylon. That news was not considered good news and I am certain many of them were reeling from it and thinking, “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” Nonetheless, God was reassuring them, “No, you were not, but I am! I know the plans that I have for you.” What an amazing statement! I know the plans that I have for you. A confirmation that the God of the
universe is intricately involved in the lives of humanity. We know from Scripture that this is not an isolated event; rather, we see over and over the reality that the God of the universe cares for His people. Our verse does not stop there though. It is not as if God simply says, “Yes, I have a plan.” He also provides them with some insight into His plan: “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” From a human perspective, seventy years in exile was not a plan to prosper, and it would be regarded as likely to cause harm, but yet God was in it and He had a plan. It is hard not to draw a parallel to Romans 8:28: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” To put this verse into context, troubles and trials were coming and were already there, but in the midst of all those challenges, no matter how painful they might be, do not lose sight of this hope: the Father has a plan and He has the power to put His plan into action. Unfortunately, the brokenness of our world often clouds our ability to see the plan that God is working out and we are left with the tough decision of what to trust. Will we trust the circumstances that we can see or will we trust the God who we
know? Now on paper this looks like a simple decision, but in the face of looming hurt, pain, and questions, it is a significantly more difficult choice. And this is where my encouragement for you lies. Let’s remember that, “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” We weren’t prepared for this moment. So often we think as people that we know so much and have so much together, but then circumstances arise and show us how completely unprepared we actually are. In those trying moments, let’s resolve to look back to the character of our God. The God who has never been caught unprepared. The God who always is at work to accomplish His plan. The God who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? You see, in the battle of this decision of where to put our trust, whether in what we can see or in our God, we need to look back to the Gospel. The good news is that Jesus Christ came willingly. He died on the cross for you and for me so that our sins can be forgiven and we can have a relationship with God. Accordingly, when the times come that we say, “I wasn’t prepared for this moment!” we can with confidence look to our Father and rest in His plan. Josh has served as a member of the PRBI team since 2021. He is married to Meagan and they have young daughters.
Financial Update Peace River Bible Institute Statement of Operations and Budget July 2020 2021 - May 2021 2022 Revenue
tudent Revenue Student
General Income Sales
Fees & Other Programs
& Non-Program Fees & Services
esidence Rental Rental
Income
onation - Undesignated Donations
- Undesignated - Designated Total Donations
onation - Designated Donations
Total Revenue
Expenses
Income To Date
Annual Budget
% of Budget To Date
551,664 593,114
665,600 666,100
89% 83%
119,750 369,323
154,550 124,550
239% 488%
112,200 180,608
151,985 145,845
77% 119%
698,909 724,213 42,475 109,852 834,065 741,384
775,000 800,000 76,200 196,200 876,200 971,200
87% 93% 56% 86% 85%
1,977,110 1,524,978
1,943,335 1,712,695
102% 89%
Expenses To Date
Annual Budget
% of Budget To Date
cademics
Academics
21,053 261,322
24,235 303,221
87% 86%
tudent Life
Campus Life
15,363 206,563
47,000 314,226
33% 66%
92,141 182,260
94,228 219,018
83% 98%
247,597 114,681
297,257 127,000
83% 90%
64,924 25,950
123,736 62,050
52% 42%
633,301 1,211,394
1,394,067 704,780
90% 87%
140,654 160,841
154,192 100,000
104% 141%
6,653 10,000
6,000
167% 111%
ood Services Food
Services
evelopment
Promotion & Development
dmissions
Admissions
dministrationAdministration
Maintenance
Facilities & Maintenance
tudent Aid
Special Project
tudent Aid
Student Aid
2,667 -
15,000
0% 18%
thers
Others
5,000
-
0%
Total Expenses Net Income (Loss) Excludes Amortization Expense
1,769,475 1,622,889
(207,635 97,910)
2,137,430 1,869,580 (194,095) (156,885)
83% 87%
God’s Provision
Austin Wooden BRE Graduate
One of the ways I’ve encountered God at PRBI over the past four years is through His provision. I came to PRBI because God was calling me here, even though I didn’t have enough money to pay for it.
I arrived on campus for my second year without much money. I remember thinking: How is this all going to work out? But it did work out. God’s provision paid for all my schooling that year.
The summer prior to coming to PRBI, I had saved a little money from working, but I needed to find a way to pay for school, and so I went to the best-paying job I knew of, Bible camp.
In my third year, COVID hit and Bible camp shut down. But God still provided. I got a job framing and doing other odd jobs that year. God gave me an opportunity to learn to do something other than camp.
After applying to PRBI, I found out about the Freshmen $3,000 bursary program. Part of God’s provision was through that generous program and through other scholarships and bursaries that I received. During my first year, I decided to enrol in the four-year program. I also went back to work at a camp. It was perhaps not the best-paying job money-wise, but spiritually it was a wise decision which helped me grow. God honoured this decision to invest my summer in camp ministry.
I am excited to be back in camp ministry this summer as a director at Camp Wapiti. I am definitely going to use what I learned at PRBI, specifically the Discovery Bible Study method. I plan to use this method in staff meetings in the mornings. I thank God and PRBI for the many opportunities to learn and grow. I am also thankful for the financial help that I have received as a result of people giving to PRBI and camp ministry.
COMING EVENTS FALL CONCERT
SEPTEMBER 9
YOUTH ALERT
MARCH 9-11
PERFORMING ARTS SHOWCASE
MARCH 31 & APRIL 2
GET INVOLVED MONTHLY GIVING
LEGACY GIVING
BE A PRAYER PARTNER
SCHOLARSHIPS & BURSARIES
REFER A STUDENT
Peace River Bible Institute is recognized as a degree-granting Bible College by the Province of Alberta. Building on Christ as our foundation, PRBI values Biblical Training, Authentic Relationships, Kingdom Service, and Strategic Partnerships. Our vision is that every student encounters Christ in ways that transform their life, energize their church, and impact their world. We are a Bible College for Life! For more information on our Mission, Vision, and Values, go to www.prbi.edu.
The TRUMPET is the magazine of Peace River Bible Institute that is comprised of contributions from faculty, staff, alumni, and students who are passionate about making disciples in their churches and communities. If you would have any comments please email us at development@prbi.edu. Printed in Canada.