CBTE Must Form Ministers for the City They Actually Serve

A Bible college may describe its programme as contextual because learners remain in their churches while studying. Yet location alone does not create contextual education. A learner can complete online lessons from an urban neighbourhood while the curriculum continues to assume a socially homogeneous congregation, stable employment, private study space, easy transport, reliable data, one ministry language and a pastor whose principal task occurs inside a church building.

The African city quickly exposes that fiction. A single congregation may gather tenants and homeowners, recent migrants and long-established families, informal workers and professionals, children using shared devices, people living with disability, displaced households and members moving between several languages. Pastoral questions meet public health, housing, transport, debt, violence, religious plurality, digital influence, climate risk and local government. The city is not merely where ministry happens. It changes what faithful ministry must notice, know, become and do.

Competency-Based Theological Education (CBTE) can respond because it connects contextual outcomes, mentored formation and demonstrated practice. This is not Kenya's general occupational Competency-Based Education and Training, or CBET. For Bible colleges and church-based ministerial formation, the CBTE approach discussed here is a contextual, mentored and competence-demonstration model integrating knowing, being and doing.

The Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa announced a webinar titled Urban Mission & Theological Education, for 24 September 2026. The announcement identifies Dr Nancy Wanjiku Njagi,…