Mentoring Is Infrastructure, Not Free Labour

Competency-Based Theological Education promises something Bible colleges urgently need: ministers can remain within their communities, integrate knowing, being and doing, receive guidance from people who know their ministry, and progress by demonstrating competence rather than merely accumulating classroom time. The approach is internationally abbreviated as CBTE.

CBTE must remain distinct from Kenya's general occupational Competency-Based Education and Training, or CBET. Ministry formation includes biblical and theological understanding, spiritual maturity, character, ecclesial accountability and contextual pastoral judgement. These dimensions require educational methods suited to the Church's life and mission, not the automatic transfer of an occupational model.

The promise of mentored formation carries a cost that is too easily hidden. If churches supply mentors, programme descriptions can make CBTE appear inexpensive. Yet good mentoring requires qualified people, protected time, training, coordination, evidence review, safeguarding, feedback, documentation and institutional accountability. Volunteer service may reduce cash expenditure; it does not remove the work or its value.

Bethel University announced on 16 January 2026 that it had received a grant of almost one million United States dollars to launch a CBTE programme. The institution presents CBTE as a route towards affordability, accessibility and closer partnership with churches. This is an official institutional announcement, not an independently audited cost study or evidence that every CBTE launch requires comparable funding. Bethel’s institutional announcement.

The scale of the grant nevertheless exposes an…