Pillsbury Begins Its 51st Year

Pillsbury Baptist Bible College started classes on Monday, August 27. This is Pillsbury's 51st year of operation as a Baptist Bible college. Although Pillsbury had been a military academy for a number of decades before 1957, it was Dr. Richard V. Clearwaters (longtime pastor of Fourth Baptist Church in Minneapolis) who was perhaps the "guiding light" in the transition of Pillsbury from a military academy to a Baptist Bible college. After serving as president of the college its first year, Dr. Clearwaters and the Pillsbury Board hired Dr. Monroe Parker as president in 1958. He had been on the evangelistic circuit for some years.

Although I did not meet Dr. Parker until the last few years of his life, I have a "secondary" connection to him. He was an administrator at Bob Jones College during the 1930s and 1940s when the school was located in Cleveland, Tennessee. Both of my parents were there at the time, and they knew Dr. Parker well. Monroe Parker stayed on at Pillsbury until 1965, when he returned to an evangelistic ministry across the United States.

Pillsbury has honored the memory of Dr. Parker by designating our opening evangelistic services as the "Monroe Parker Evangelistic Meetings." We bring in a prominent speaker to encourage our students and faculty. This year's speaker was Dr. Jerry Sivnksty, whose home is in Starr, South Carolina. Jerry has preached here in past years, and he is one of our favorites on campus. He grew up in the coal mining area of West Virginia—come to think of it, there isn't much of West Virginia that isn't a coal mining area.

In addition to his southern accent, Jerry's family spoke Lithuanian at home, so he had a few "speech problems" when he enrolled in Bob Jones University during the 1960s. Bob Pratt and Joyce Parks, longtime members of the speech faculty at BJU, at first discouraged Jerry from going into evangelism. But when he said that he felt God's call to do so, they did everything they could to help him. Jerry is a perfect example of someone who overcomes a few obstacles to do what God called him to do.

That's what Pillsbury is all about, by the way. The faculty and staff want to do everything we can to help students find God's will for their lives and to help prepare them to do it. Please pray for our students, faculty, and staff duirng this new school year.