From Education to Vocational Competence

Christianity places a very high value on relationships and mutual service. When speaking of Christian vocational development, we assume that most Christians are motivated to serve in tangible “high-touch” ways that affect people positively. So, while the volunteer spirit is alive and well among us as a people and many are motivated to serve within their gifting, too often the service rendered is subpar or unproductive due to the lack of a good gift match, or because of a lack of training. Some of us get off to a good start but find ourselves floundering mid-career. If those serving either as unpaid volunteers or paid members of staff are not competent, the whole body suffers. How then do we address the need to develop highly effective servants?

Trying to crank up greater commitment in volunteers or taking graduate level studies as paid professionals rarely is the answer to generating greater effectiveness. Professional staff may be challenged by seminary courses to a greater understanding of theological paradigms and/or ecclesiological norms and forms, but these seldom address their real ministry challenges or develop the plethora of character traits and skills needed to effectively lead churches or ministries. Likewise, when volunteers feel they are incompetent, just feeding their motivation with encouragement and/or kudos, doesn’t generate competence.

Both motivation and education are important, but these may have little effect on developing competent people if they don’t meet real learning needs. We will deal with the motivation and its relationship to developing competence later on. What we want to focus on here is why we may miss the mark with formal educational programs that aim to develop people in their service.

The goal of education

Acquiring knowledge and/or understanding is often the goal of educational programs. But vocational growth is whole person growth. As educators, how often when listing course objectives do we struggle to come up with the skill and affective objectives we may be asked to include in our courses? Knowledge is instrumental to developing competence, but it must be relevant and applicable to the specific challenges adults are facing. This calls for the right information, the right processes, and the right timing as adults attempt to grow in their abilities to deal with real life issues, and perfect themselves in their occupations.

The problem with coursework that is planned, bundled, and delivered as academic programs, may be that it is abstract, irrelevant, and contribute little to students’ existential needs or personal goals, except as another course to check off towards a degree. Academic courses are designed by subject matter experts (SMEs) who are typically more interested in teaching what they are assigned to teach, than on addressing students’ felt needs. And to compound the problem, with growing knowledge, comes the need to continue to expand the number of required courses in a program. Having served on faculties, I know how tempting it is to keep adding courses that suit the pet interests of diverse faculty members. As that happens, we inevitably bloat programs and increase the number of “credits” needed to graduate from the program. Theoretical knowledge isn’t a bad objective. It may even be essential to professional growth. But the specificity of the content and its timing determines its usefulness in generating outcomes that address real-life needs.

Many of us in Christian service who have sought out graduate programs as a means of addressing work-related challenges or to developing greater competence, have been disappointed in the one-size-fits-all approach to many offerings. I remember reaching the “glass ceiling” in my work as a ministry trainer and searching in vain for a seminary program with coursework that would help me anwer the questions I was asking. I believe this is a common experience.

Being firmly in control of academia, academics tend to prepare people for academia, where becoming accredited subject matter experts is its highest achievement. Students are tested not on their competence in dealing with real-world challenges, but on academic performance. Becoming academics may be the vocational calling of some and for them, academic training is probably their ticket. But most individuals have other goals and plans for their lives. What is more, what employers (ie. churches, Christian agencies and assorted ministries) need are competent people, not just knowledgeable ones.

Part of the problem is with the commonly held assumption that educators must design courses and bundle them into educational programs because adult learners “don’t know what they don’t know.” I challenge this assumption. I believe that those people already serving in the trenches are keenly aware of their own limitations and what they need to learn. What is more, they envision their own future with competencies which may or may not be identified by academics because they are specific to their context and circumstances. But with no other options, they continue to sign up for programs in the hopes that they can glean from their studies enough to satisfy their needs, or alternatively, with the wide scope of non-formal training now available online, they will pick and choose courses along the lines of their interests but without the ability to generate a cohesive whole or the discipline and accountability which most of us need.

Thus, many educational programs focus on what educators think the student needs to know rather than zeroing in on the knowledge needed to develop the real-life competencies students must have to succeed as people and to prosper vocationally. How many times have we been required to take courses in programs because they were deemed “important” to our “general understanding,” even though they had no direct application to our lives or work? They were required to earn a degree, but they added little or nothing to needed skill sets or who we wanted to become. Not only have we forgotten the names of those courses but what they were about! Content that isn’t used is forgotten.

The importance of vocational competence

To be able to serve well, one must be competent. Developing competence requires practice and that is usually provided by the context in which one serves. We like to say that “context informs” what a student needs to learn but much more than that—it is in the doing that a student develops competence. When the service context and experience is absent and there is little or no opportunity to apply what is being taught, a disconnect is created between learning and the development of competence. And while we are on topic, along with Pablo Freire and others, let us dismiss the myth that after several years of study leading to a title or degree, students enter their professions as competent individuals. The only knowledge that is useful to developing competence is that which can be applied as it is acquired or soon thereafter.

What I am suggesting is a shift away from traditional programs that require all students to pass through a “bundled” series of largely pre-defined theoretical courses, to an approach that allows both the student and their specific service context to inform and even dictate their knowledge needs and the timing of its acquisition. This is education with the end in view. Focus on the student and the specific competencies each individual needs for vocational development, with real life indicators to mark success. Access to reliable sources of information and the processing of relevant information are still significant activities for educational institutions to take on in this task, so there is plenty of room for their participation in this process along with providing an all-important accountability structure. But the goal should not be “knowledge” but “competence.” When “vocational competence” leads the process, the knowledge required will be defined largely by the student’s own need and the service context, not by academia.

When I was working in Argentina in the field of missionary training a few years ago, I remember a seminary that set up a program for those students called to serve as missionaries. It was a prestigious institution and its contribution to this emerging field was an exciting development. However, the one-year program was tacked-on to its existing three-year program, and students would only be allowed to enroll in the specialized program once they’d completed the previous years of theological study. Although armed with a distinguished group of mission professors, the program had almost no takers and was closed soon after its inception.

I believe this program failed because it was not offered in a way that students could satisfy their need to begin developing their missionary calling from the onset of their studies. It is obvious that the school either prioritized their standard theological course offerings as “important” or “basic” to missionary work (a questionable assumption in my opinion) and thus required it, or they tried to use “the carrot on a stick to lead the donkey on” approach to gain new enrollment. Had they allowed students to pursue their pressing interests, students may have put up with the other course requirements which they believed to be less compelling in the fulfillment of their calling.

Deferring studies of interest to the student or adding tangential coursework onto a student’s agenda in my estimation, is counterproductive. If churches, Bible schools and seminaries took a greater interest in meeting the pressing vocational needs of their students as they pursue their God-given calling, they would be much more effective in generating effective workers. The way to achieve this is to start by tapping into the believer’s motivational gifts, envisioning the ministry, defining ministry competencies to be developed, evaluating current competencies and then fill in with coursework in a way that addresses urgent needs and systematically builds competence through workplace experience. This is what we suggest with Self-Directed Learning system.

Lest a reader feel that developing vocational competence isn’t the role of churches, Bible schools or seminaries, I would challenge that notion with Paul’s injunction in Ephesians 4:12 that the mission of those who are most learned and experienced in the church (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers) is to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry.” In today’s environment, that means a lot more than giving them a good dose of Bible and theology. Couldn’t we consider vocational “ministry” development the priority and mentoring that process with experienced servants as a way to address the need for greater competence in our volunteers and staff? Subjects and coursework would be the third priority after competency definition and mentor alignment, rather than the lead component of our educational systems. Let vocation lead the way.

Dr. Jonathan Lewis (Ph.D. Human Resource Development)