Competency-Based Education Means Nothing: A Clarification
“Competency-based education” is an approach to education in which the standards are high and inflexible, but the time that a student may take to achieve the high standards is allowed to vary.
This article has been republished from Lutheran Orthodoxy with the permission of Rev. Dr. Ben Mayes.
The undersigned has made the case that Johann Gerhard and early Lutheranism employed a kind of competency-based education in the formation of pastors. I stated:
Qualification for the pastoral office depended wholly on the competency of the man, and the theological curriculum existed wholly to make the man competent to be a pastor. Thus, instead of a grade card or academic transcript, recommendation letters for candidates were commonly written, testifying to the candidate’s moral character, ability to preach, and understanding of doctrine. These competencies were seen as requisite in order to be a pastor. That is, qualification for the pastoral office was based in part on the piety and character of the candidate. It was expected that candidates must first have experienced God’s word and cultivated it in prayer and reading, and that they had been put to the test in the real world. These kinds of competencies (academic and personal) were far more important than any academic degree for most parishes and pastors. This appears to be a rigorous kind of competency-based education.1 ...
Gerhard’s method of pastoral formation looks to me like competency-based pastoral formation. For being a pastor, no particular degree was required; no particular classes had to be taken. What was required was a thorough knowledge of the Bible and theology, an excellent ability to preach and teach, and piety. Formal assessment seems to have been mostly lacking. There was some assessment of students in early Lutheranism, though not as much as in a typical North American educational institution. Students were evaluated only if they wanted to be tested for a degree, or as part of their rigorous theological interview as part of the call process.2
If a reader neglected to read section 3 of the essay, where I speak in detail about the careful way in which Lutheran church orders regulated the examination of candidates for the office of pastor, and the rigorous testing through which a candidate had to pass before being approved for a call,3 one might think erroneously that quality control of pastoral candidates was non-centralized, ad-hoc, or even haphazard. That is not how it was. In fact, a study of Gerhard’s approach to pastoral formation shows a rigorous pastoral formation, with high standards written in the church order, with testing conducted by the Church through its official representatives.
The problem with what is called “competency-based education” these days is that it can mean anything, or nothing. We can see an example of how haphazard “competency-based education” can be in the pages of Forum, the magazine of Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. In the summer 2023 edition of Forum, Aaron Einfeld says that at his seminary, “competency-based education” means:
Instead of completing traditional classes, students in the program are guided by a three-person mentor team to develop competencies for ministry. These competencies each encapsulate a combination of knowledge, character, and skill. ... The mentor team includes a C[alvin] T[heological] S[eminary] faculty member and experienced ministry leaders who coach, guide, and assess students as they develop and demonstrate competency for ministry. Students complete a program when they demonstrate sufficient competence in all program competencies. Simply put, Empower moves the leadership development process back into the church.4
This kind of “competency-based education” means that local ministry leaders decide when their candidate is ready to be a pastor. This is quite different from early Lutheranism’s demanding, objective, documented standards, implemented by the church’s official representatives. Calvin’s official guide to their Empower program does not even define what “competency-based education” is!5
So what do we actually mean by “competency-based education”? If we simply mean that we have expected competencies (in our case, based at least on 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1), and until a student obtains these competencies, he cannot be a pastor—well, then, what the LCMS currently has, and has always had, is indeed “competency-based education.” We already have it.
But if by “competency-based education” we mean a non-centralized, subjective evaluation of candidates according to unclear standards, such as Calvin Seminary seems to promote, then early Lutheranism never practiced it, we do not have it, and we should not want it.
But neither of these definitions are what I meant in my article. Instead, a good definition of “competency-based education” says that it is an approach to education in which the standards are high and inflexible, but the time that a student may take to achieve the high standards is allowed to vary.6 This, with publicly documented and accepted standards and testing by the church’s officials, is how early Lutheranism formed pastors.
Benjamin T. G. Mayes
Dec. 5, 2025 A+D
Benjamin T. G. Mayes, “Pastoral Formation in Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Method of Theological Study Proposed by Johann Gerhard,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 88, nos. 2–3 (2024): 107, https://media.ctsfw.edu/Text/ViewDetails/21542.
Mayes, “Pastoral Formation in Lutheran Orthodoxy,” 119.
Mayes, “Pastoral Formation in Lutheran Orthodoxy,” 113–17.
Aaron Einfeld, “Empowering Students Through Competency-Based Theological Education,” Forum (Calvin Theological Seminary), Summer 2023, 36.
“But now there is a new movement in North American theological education called Competency-Based Theological Education (CBTE). This model combines the strengths of the apprenticeship and university models. CBTE is an ancient-future form of training that is embraced by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) accrediting body.” https://calvinseminary.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CTS-EmpowerGuide2022-final92022-1.pdf
Rebecca Klein-Collins, “Sharpening Our Focus on Learning: The Rise of Competency-Based Approaches to Degree Completion,” National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, no. Occasional Paper #20 (November 2023): 7–8, https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/617695/premium_content_resources/CBE-Publications/PDF/Occasional-Paper-20.pdf.
"Students complete a program when they demonstrate sufficient competence in all program competencies." Whenever I encounter a circular sentence such as this, I am already suspect. Competence in competencies. Oh, for lack of definition!
Ii think the underlying issue here is who evaluates the candidates for ordination. In 16th and 17th centuries, it was the regional consistory, which was a mixture of qualified clergy and laity. I would like to see something similar today in place of the seminaries certifying their own work product. It's a bit like the contractor being the building inspector or the butcher being the health inspector. Certainly the seminaries should have some say in the matter, but the examination of candidates should be something for which the whole church has a stake.
I am experienced in “competency-based education” when it comes to skilled trades. I know it from the US Dept. of Labor Registered Apprenticeship type system and the German "Duale Hochschule" method. Both have differences, advantages/disadvantages, but the similarity is this: The competency based model is usually used for careers that involve physical labor and practical problem solving. The problem solving model that fits this is plan, do, check, adjust. It is meant to address problems where the root cause is identifiable without complex methodology. Sometimes you encounter problems that require statistical problem solving methods or design elements. This is usually left to engineers to solve, who by and large, had a traditional education - many times they come from the trades, but not without having to go through traditional education to become an engineer. These people normally teach the trades people how to fix something, or design something new for them, when the problem cannot be solved by returning something broken to its original design state.
For pastors, I guess you could take a competency based education approach, but it does not lend itself to being "apt to teach". It lends itself to being "apt to do", which is also necessary, but is not one of the primary qualifications of a pastor. The competency method would probably be great for deacons, if we Lutherans saw that as an office in the Church.