Pastoral Formation: Competency Before Credentials

Article

Pastoral Formation in the Age of Lutheran Orthodoxy

A surprisingly competency-based approach

By Daniel Witte

This article contains links for those who want to read more.

An article about an article?

Well, yes. I have a recommendation for you.

Read a 2024 article by Benjamin T. G. Mayes, “Pastoral Formation in Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Method of Theological Study Proposed by Johann Gerhard.” Apply it to your theological education situation.

Mayes’s article appeared on pages 99–121 in the April/July 2024 issue (Volume 88:2–3) of Concordia Theological Quarterly. CTQ is the journal of Concordia Theological Seminary of Fort Wayne, Indiana (LCMS). The article is available free online in .pdf. Mayes is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. You can reach him at benjamin.mayes@ctsfw.edu.

What would it look like if we trained pastors more this way? What if it was less about courses they complete, and more about what they can actually do—teach, preach, and care for souls?

As you read this summary, ask yourself:

Where does this match what we do now?
Where does it challenge us?
What small change could we test?

Why an article about an article?

In 2025 we looked at a brief introduction to Competency Based Theological Education. Mayes shows that what we call CBTE today has deep roots in Lutheran practice.

CBTE contrasts with traditional curricula in culture, assessment, and pace.

Students do not all complete the same courses at the same speed.
Even “courses” may not be the best wording—think “learning experiences.”
Progression in CBTE focuses more on what a student can do.

Perhaps you read that October 2025 article with skepticism. Perhaps you asked, “Is newer truer?” “Why not stick with familiar ways?”

Consider Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), professor of theology at Jena, Germany (1616–1637). Gerhard’s written output was prodigious. Still today it enlightens scholars—in Latin and German, his original languages, and in translation.

You might expect that a scholar like Gerhard would demand the highest rigor from theological students and future pastors whom he trained, and that such rigor might resemble typical diploma, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs for theological education today. You might expect that someone like Gerhard who over 13 years, starting at age 28, can publish a doctrine textbook which today appears as 19 volumes in English translation, would want the men he trained as pastors to be as intellectual as he. You might expect that someone who, as the CPH series blurb puts it, can present “the Christian faith from Scripture in dialogue with the Church Fathers, medieval theology, Luther, and a multitude of contemporary theologians” would want all the future pastors studying with him at Jena to be capable of similar thoroughness in their future pulpits and classrooms and to have degrees to prove it.

You would be mistaken.

17th century competency-based theological education

Consider some of Mayes’s findings.

“From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, it has been estimated that students stayed at the University of Wittenberg an average of 1.8 years. A university degree was not required in order to become a pastor. In fact, in early modern Germany, pastors with university degrees were usually not wanted for rural pastorates” (106).
“Theological study at a university was also quite different from modern North American practices, because university statutes (at least at Wittenberg) did not speak about or require grades or examinations, except when students wanted to graduate with a degree.
“While programs of study and course offerings were well defined, there was a surprising amount of freedom. There were no set entrance requirements for the universities (aside from fluency in Latin), and there was no specific length of time that a student needed to stay at the university.
“Appointment to a parish as a pastor did not usually require a formal academic degree. Instead, the church’s examinations were required, and these focused on the candidate’s confession of faith, knowledge of the Bible and theology, and preaching.
“Thus, the length of study was tailored to students, who had differing abilities and education levels when arriving at the universities” (106–107).
“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 (emphasis added).
“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” (107).