Are you a competent Christian? Even though this might seem an odd thing to ask, it's the very question I'm thinking through as I design the new syllabus for the Youthworks Year 13 Gospel Gap Year program.

Our current practice is to enrol students in a Diploma of Theology, and teach them four of the sixteen subjects required for this Australian College of Theology qualification. But for 2008, we plan to provide our own award that will enable students to receive a completed certificate for their one year of training and service.

The big difference between the Diploma of Theology and the Certificate IV in Everyday Ministry (or whatever we finally decide to call it!) is that they are in different sectors within the educational world. The former award is within the Higher Education sector, which includes university diplomas, degrees, and so on. It is commonly assessed through written exams, essays, and generally by asking people to show they are worthy of receiving credit for a subject when they can show they know lots about a representative (and often small) part of the syllabus.

However, the award I'm creating is within the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, which is usually associated with TAFE certificates and diplomas. It is usually assessed by requiring people to demonstrate skills and abilities within every part of each so-called "competency'.

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, to be able to award my VET sector qualification to the students in next year's Year 13 program, I will need them to demonstrate that they are fully competent in all the areas I choose to assess as part of the certificate course.

This is a major change in thinking about education. And it is a major change in thinking about training in lay ministry.

So, instead of requiring students to sit an exam for the subject "Christian Ethics', we will train them in the skill of writing an opinion article in response to a current issue in the media. Rather than get students to write an essay on "Biblical Theology', we will show them how to write a Bible study on an Old Testament passage. Instead of asking students to review a book for the subject "Evangelism', we will train them to be competent in giving an evangelistic testimony.

However, even though this may appear to be a radical shift in education, it still means that the core teaching is the same. In order to be competent at writing an Old Testament Bible study, the student will need to have an understanding of Biblical Theology, Doctrine, Hermeneutics (interpretation) and more. Students will still be taught the subjects that have formed the heart of theological education throughout time.

Yet, the assessment is very different. Our task will be to determine whether the students are able to use these tools and skills to produce an outcome that can be measured. The underlying knowledge will remain the same. However, instead of assessing the foundations, we will examine the edifice that is constructed on that base of learning.

For many of us, this is new and unfamiliar territory. To talk about training for skills in ministry seems overly pragmatic and concrete. The concept of learning for learning's sake seems to be superseded by tasks and skills.

Yet, to train for and assess competencies provides a means of focusing our learning, and concentrating our training. The Year 13 Gospel Gap Year is only nine months long, and in this course I wish to train the next generation of Christians in everyday ministry. There is so much I would love to share with them, but our time is short. Competency-based learning provides a framework to assess whether a certain area of knowledge is in the "must' or the "maybe' list. After all, the subset of Year 13 graduates who eventually prepare themselves for full-time ministry will have the luxury of more than one year of training.

With this framework in mind, I now set myself the task of determining which competencies I will train and assess. It is a difficult exercise to work out which essential skills every Christian should aim to possess. If you were asked to write such a list of competencies, then what would you include? And when you finished the list, would you be able to say you were competent in every task? If not, then what training will you undertake so that you are a competent Christian?

Jodie McNeill is the Director of the Youthworks Year 13 Gospel Gap Year program. Find out more about the unfolding 2008 program at [url=http://www.year13.youthworks.net]http://www.year13.youthworks.net[/url]