ANGWIN, Calif. — Mere weeks into the school year, students at Pacific Union College are already being pummeled with the most serious of Adventist academic pressures: finding a life partner. As usual, “Relationships” is the theme for the school’s Week of Prayer which started yesterday, but instead of simply encouraging dating within the student population, PUC is using the week to promote an entirely new school slogan: “Flirt to Convert.”
“I tell all my students that witnessing about your faith is so much easier if the person you are trying to reach wants to date you,” said Personal Evangelism professor Ian Chambers, PhD. “My philosophy is simple as I send my students into the community for field work: “Each One Reach One.”
Effective this year, “Flirt to Convert 101,” a new class taught by a multidisciplinary team of professors from PUC’s Psychology and Theology departments, will be mandatory for graduation.
“Adventists have taken a far too one-dimensional approach to evangelism,” said Church History Instructor, Ben Knight. “Massive public meetings, revival campaigns and Revelation seminars are ineffective and passé. We at PUC are going to teach our students to harness the power of romance to change the world.”
So far students have greeted the new slogan with massive enthusiasm. Hoards of student evangelists have already logged hundreds of community outreach hours sharing their faith far past curfew on school nights and all over the Bay Area on weekends.
