Help! ATS Seminary

[jjwolfe]

I have an impossible one for you!  I am 48.  I'm thinking about Army chaplaincy.  I need an ATS attached seminary that I can do an MDiv at quickly!  2 years or less.  So work at your own pace is needed.  I know the usual suspects like Nations.edu but they are not ATS.  Any ideas?

[rachel83az]

Have you checked out the ATS website itself? It has a search function: https://www.ats.edu/Find-a-School

I'd probably go with Kairos. https://www.ats.edu/member-schools/kairos-university Kairos has a self-paced competency-based system.

[DeanLewis]

Best bet is to do all you can at Nations and transfer to Liberty.

[mosaic]

Hi JJ, I've made an account to share what I know. Hope it helps.

I'm not sure you need it to be ATS accredited according to DoDI 1304.28. It seems to me that an ABHE accredited school will also suffice. A chaplain recruiter I spoke with said they use chea.org to check the validity of a particular school.
Apparently it used to be the case that you could have an MA or other non-MDiv degree as long as you had additional credits of at least 72 semester credit hours. Now it must be a degree program that requires 72 hours, unless they make an exception for you.

Seminarycomparison.com is a website made by DTS which has a table comparing different evangelical seminary programs. I think the data is a little out of date.

I would echo Kairos for it's competency based program. There are others with competency based mdivs: Lexington, grace, truett (Baylor). Northwest Seminary (British Columbia) also has one but it's in "applicant" status with the ABHE granted in 2019. Your recruiter will have to tell you if that's a go.

But instead of competency based I would recommend Liberty because of its 8 week terms, military block rate tuition, and challenge exams. If you take just 2 classes each sub-term (very doable), and there are 7 subterms in a year, you can get 42 credits in a year. Liberty has one of the shorter MDivs at 75 hours so this is beyond halfway.
There are 12 graudate level challenge exams, all of them in the divinity school, so if you're able to pass 10 you could be done in one year.

Good luck at CHBOLC!

[cc95]

Can you post about these 12 challenge exams in more detail? Does it bypass coursework or what is it?

[mosaic]

Can you post about these 12 challenge exams in more detail? Does it bypass coursework or what is it?

It's like a CLEP

https://www.liberty.edu/registrar/credit...-test/ice/

I have not done it myself

[Grace Seminary Dean]

jjwolfeI have an impossible one for you!  I am 48.  I'm thinking about Army chaplaincy.  I need an ATS attached seminary that I can do an MDiv at quickly!  2 years or less.  So work at your own pace is needed.  I know the usual suspects like Nations.edu but they are not ATS.  Any ideas?

Hi JJWolfe, I am the Dean of Grace Theological Seminary.  We have a 72 hour MA in Chaplaincy and a 75-81 hour MDiv (depending on which program you're interested in).  We service Chaplains and our Admissions Director, Rob Neufer (seminary@grace.edu) is a recent career military retiree. 

We are the only seminary who offers all available delivery methods: On Campus, On Line, On Site.  Our fully-online MDiv goes live this fall semester.  Our on-site competency-based program can be done at your local church or ministry.  All of these are very affordable and we are even approved to offer military-funded GI Bill education as well as Title IV funding.

Check us out at seminary.grace.edu.  Contact our competency-based program (Deploy) Director, Gabe Tribbett (gabe.tribbett@grace.edu) or Rob Neufer (seminary@grace.edu) anytime.

Blessings,


Freddy Cardoza, Ph.D.
Dean, Grace Seminary