The Engagement Challenge
Posted on January 5th, 2007 by catalyst into the PBC categoryEvery now and then, for a good time, JP and I like to cruise the PBC Student Rule Book. It makes us feel better about our own lives.
So here, for your reading pleasure, are the rules for getting Engaged at Portland Bible College:
Engagements
An engagement shall be defined as verbal consent to marry with or without evidence of a ring or public announcement. Since most young people are away from their parents and pastors, the following standard is intended to ensure the proper involvement of all concerned. Therefore, the Dean must approve all engagements and marriages before the two parties make verbal consent. This applies to all students whether or not their fiancé attends PBC.
Types of situations where approval might be granted are when both students are:
• Seniors in Bible college;
• Older students; Part-time students (under 12 hours);
• Over 21 years of age.
Types of situations not likely to receive permission are when students:
• Met or started dating near the time of, or after arrival at school,
• Are under 21 years of age (one or both)
• Have not had sufficient time to mature in Christian character.
Honestly, I don't think you should get married until you're 30. But still, this seems a little heavy handed.
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January 5th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Sadly it looks like they’ve actually let up on some points since my time there.
January 5th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I often find it somewhat humerous that my wife and I met while at PBC, and were both expelled. She was a first-year freshman, and so (according to PBC rules at the time) she was off limits for dating. Obviously that didn’t stop us from being together, and we were “forced” to disobey the rules…
I can’t remember the number of times we were hauled before Steve/Beth Cole or Bill Schiedler and made to feel like we were some kind of horrible sinners who had offended God himself with our rebellious attitude and actions.
We were chastised numerous times by other church administration, and I was told by Bill himself that our relationship was not from God and that we would not be “blessed” if we continued to disobey PBC rules.
10 years later… we just had our first kid, and I consider my relationship with my wife to be very “blessed”.
PBC should stay out of the personal lives of their students. The PBC “rules” handbook is nothing more then a written record of their own self-determined superiority and evidence of a pharasitical legalization mentality.
January 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Do they still prohibit people from talking to each other if it looks as if they may be “cultivating” a relationship in the first semester? That was my personal favourite, and it always worked so well.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
So they only discourage girl-boy relationships? Homosexual relationships must be OK?
January 6th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
The cultivating..I had forgotten!
Henry, you’re so right. I can’t even stand to think about how some of you that were starting relationships were treated. It’s infuriating that normal & healthy relationships were scrutinized & judged at all, let alone to the severity they were & continue to be up there on the hill. Unfortunately, they don’t view their students as adults making their own decisions. It’s run like a summer camp, and students may as well be in junior high, because that’s the level of respect they receive. Henri, you & Cara were two of the nicest & most intelligent people I met at PBC, and I don’t know how anyone could have treated you guys that way. It’s absurd! –Karli
P.S. Your little girl is such a cutie–congratulations!
January 6th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
P.S.S. I find it interesting that social dancing is listed as a purity issue, and a possible contaminating influence & addicting behavior. Sigh, I was a little disappointed to see that the handbook hasn’t changed at all since my days on the hill 12 years ago. I had kind of hoped they had realized by now that the Puritan era ended about 350 years ago.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Hannah, during my first semester at PBC (I was 23, not 18), I “talked with a boy” for–gasp–90 minutes, so we were forbidden to speak for 30 days (we had all the same classes & friends). During the 90 minute conversation, we were definitely just friends. By the end of the 30 days, we were swooning for each other. We always want what we can’t have, right? Shortly thereafter, we got engaged, and God had to use some fairly drastic measures to get me to listen to Him telling me that the guy was NOT His choice for me. We didn’t marry, but the PBC leaders seriously shamed me for even getting engaged to the “wrong guy” and were quite puzzled as to how that happened. I told them that I felt the 30-day-no-speaking directly caused us see and want each other in a way that likely would never have happened outside of that context. Their response was basically “interesting,” so I have no illusions that I made a dent in their mindset. That place “cultivates” such weirdness around male-female relationships, it’s amazing anyone hooks up there or ends up in a healthy marriage.
I love how the PBC handbook forbids students from “abusive behavior” but that some leaders there abuse and manipulate students and church members regularly.
Also, one more story about the “Morality and Ethics” list of no-no’s: it states “Students should exercise discretion in choosing employment that may require them to compromise Christian standards (i.e. promotion of alcohol, dishonest business practices).” While at PBC, several of my friends and I stumbled upon the Rinelander restaurant and were given an opportunity to work at the potato-pancake booth at Octoberfest (which we wanted to do in order to pay our PBC tuition…we planned to miss a church service to work a shift, but we planned on taking the demerits for that). After working one shift, somehow the powers that be at BT caught wind of our weekend job, one of my friends tracked Dick Iverson down ON the domes as he worked on them, and we all ended up in a meeting w/Dick Iverson & Bob Wagar, getting chastised for working in such a corrupt environment, and basically forbidden to go back, and that if we did it would not be “a demerit issue” but an expulsion issue. At the time, I knew Octoberfest was essentially a German beer & food fest, but wouldn’t have even considered injesting a drop of alcohol (now I regularly drink wine with a very clear conscience). Making potato pancakes was pretty innocent, though. It was the whole “appearance of evil” issue for PBC. So silly.
Good times.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:54 am
This may be controversial, but I believe that a school or church has absolutely no business in regulating what an adult can do as far as being married.
Yes, the church has the right to not hae them marry in that church, but that’s about it as far as I am concerned.
Call it a separation of church and marriage, if you will.
January 7th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Funny how they wouldn’t let you work at Rhinelander but seem to encourage students to work for certain “christian business leaders” who have terrible reputations in the business community due to their sharp practice.
June 17th, 2007 at 12:10 am
I remember when I first applied to PBC and I couldn’t find the rules or anything like that anywhere on their site. The “student handbook” is found under the student life section, with a link which says “A-Z of Student Life at PBC”. I didn’t find it til after God had told me to attend PBC and I had made my decision. But if I had read all the dang rules prior to my decision, I probably would have ignored God and gone off to university as planned. Now I am one year through.
This is my first time posting here, hopefully I will be on more. However, a lot of the commenters here are very long winded, which doesn’t make for a very fluent blog. Though, the discussions are interesting.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Its not like that anymore. I currently go to PBC and they have lightened up a ton. I can think of at least 4 couples who are getting married that don’t fit all those guidelines and they all have the blessing of the leadership. But reading some of your stories about the place just a few years ago makes the place sound pretty shady.
July 21st, 2007 at 5:54 am
When I was going there, we were only allowed to sit with our girlfriends (or boyfriends, if you were a girl) for a total of 3 services a week, including chapels.
Which, of course, wasn’t enough.
So, I began employing the method of sitting just behind her, or one seat away. Worked just fine for several weeks, and no one seemed to notice (or care) until Frank figured it out (he was my counselor), and kiboshed it.
I guess it was him who caught it since he had employed similar tricks himself. I remember when, still a student, he got caught sneaking around mid-week at Lloyd Center with Sharon, on TV no less! Seems they passed right through a live shot, arm-in-arm, being done by one of the networks.
Showed up on that evening’s news
joebib