Contextual CBTE Must Begin With the Ministry Problem

A curriculum committee wants to make theological education more African. It adds African authors, inserts local case studies and changes several examples. The course titles, sequence, timetable, examinations and final practicum remain untouched. Learners still spend most of the programme receiving lectures and meet the complexity of ministry only after the academic work is nearly complete.

The additions may improve representation. They do not yet prove that context governs learning. Contextualisation becomes structural when the situations in which people must serve help determine the competences, learning sequence, mentor team, evidence and standard of faithful performance.

CBTE means Competency-Based Theological Education. It is distinct from Kenya's general occupational Competency-Based Education and Training, or CBET. Bible-college CBTE is principally a contextual, mentored and competence-demonstration model for church-based ministerial formation. Its central question is not how to decorate an inherited curriculum, but what a learner must faithfully know, become and do among actual people in a particular place.

The Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa scheduled a webinar on decolonising the curriculum of theological education for 4:00 p.m. East Africa Time today, 26 August, with Marilyn Naidoo of the University of South Africa. ACTEA's official page verifies the date, speaker and subject and locates the event within its work in accreditation, research and capacity-building for theological education in Africa. ACTEA event listing.

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