ChristianDegree.org is an independent research site on theology, ministry, biblical studies, and Christian education, founded by three people with terminal degrees and long professional records in the field. Steve Williams holds a D.Min. from Fuller Theological Seminary and an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell, with twenty-five years in pastoral ministry and seminary teaching. Maria Scott holds a Ph.D. in Christian Education from Biola University with eighteen years in Christian higher education. John Chu holds a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from the University of St Andrews and a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, with twenty years teaching New Testament. The site maintains a database of 2,842 programs at 481 institutions and publishes original research including the Christian Ministry and Theology Graduate Outcomes Survey 2026 and the Theology Program Quality Index 2026. No institution pays for coverage or ranking position. Last reviewed August 2026.
Why we started ChristianDegree.org
All three of us have been on the receiving end of the problem this site exists to address. Steve has hired ministry graduates and then watched them struggle with the parts of the job nobody trained them for. Maria has sat with twenty-six-year-olds deciding whether to leave ministry, and heard the same account repeatedly: the classroom was excellent and the work was nothing like it. John has taught students who arrived at doctoral study without the languages, because nobody told them in year one that the door was closing.
The information that would have prevented each of those situations exists. It is simply not published where prospective students look, because the people who hold it are institutions with an interest in enrollment. A seminary publishes its faculty, its history, and its campus. It does not publish how many supervised ministry hours the degree actually requires, whether anyone will watch you preach, what its graduates are doing three years later, or which denominations decline its degrees.
Our own research quantified the gap. In the Christian Ministry and Theology Graduate Outcomes Survey 2026, 63 percent of churches and ministries reported difficulty finding graduates with practical ministry skills, and 58 percent of graduates said they wished they had received more training in pastoral counseling and practical ministry. Employers cannot find the skill. Graduates know they were not given it. Nobody was lying to anyone, and the outcome was bad anyway.
Meet the team
Steve Williams
Executive Director and Theology Curriculum Lead
Steve has spent more than twenty-five years inside the two worlds this site sits between: the local church and the seminary classroom. He served as senior pastor at multiple congregations and held adjunct appointments at several seminaries, which means he has both hired ministry graduates and taught them. Those are different vantage points, and the gap between them is most of what this site exists to close.
He writes and reviews the curriculum analysis here. Every claim about what a degree contains, what it prepares you for, and what it leaves out passes through him first. He is unsentimental about cutting language that flatters a program without telling a prospective student anything useful.
His position on program selection is consistent and unpopular with admissions offices: the catalog is marketing, the field education requirement is the program. He tells students to read the supervised ministry requirement before the mission statement, and to ask how many hours are actually supervised by someone who will give them hard feedback.
- Education
- D.Min., Doctor of Ministry, Fuller Theological Seminary · M.Div., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary · B.A. in Biblical Studies, Wheaton College
- Credentials
- Ordained minister, 25+ years in pastoral ministry · Adjunct faculty appointments in theological education · Curriculum author, Christian education and leadership formation
- Expertise
- biblical theology, pastoral ministry, Christian leadership formation, seminary curriculum design, ordination pathways
- Covers on this site
- Theological accuracy, program evaluation, and overall content strategy across the site.
Maria Scott
Director of Christian Education and Ministry Formation
Maria has eighteen years in Christian higher education, including a term as Dean of Students at a Christian university and several years directing ministry formation programs. She has sat on both sides of the discernment conversation: with eighteen-year-olds deciding whether to enroll, and with twenty-six-year-olds deciding whether to stay in ministry.
She owns the career and formation sections of this site. Her published work is on Christian education methodology and student development, and she brought the same instinct here: describe the actual developmental sequence a student moves through, not the idealized one in the recruitment brochure.
Her recurring argument is that vocational discernment is a process with stages, not a single lightning strike, and that treating it as a lightning strike is what produces the graduates who leave ministry within five years. She is direct that a degree cannot manufacture a call, and equally direct that a genuine call left untrained is not a virtue.
- Education
- Ph.D. in Christian Education, Biola University · M.A. in Ministry Leadership, Azusa Pacific University · B.S. in Christian Ministry, Oral Roberts University
- Credentials
- Former Dean of Students, Christian university · Former director of ministry formation programs · Published on Christian education methodology and student development
- Expertise
- spiritual formation, discipleship pathways, vocational discernment, Christian higher education, student development
- Covers on this site
- Ministry careers, Christian education programs, formation pathways, and vocational discernment.
John Chu
Director of Apologetics and Biblical Studies
John spent twenty years in apologetics, biblical studies, and theological research, including professorships in New Testament at more than one seminary. His research covers early Christian history, textual criticism, and the methodology of apologetics, and he reads the primary languages rather than relying on translations of them.
He is the final check on biblical and theological claims across this site. When a career guide or ranking page makes a statement about what an exegesis sequence teaches, or what a program means by hermeneutics, he is the one who decides whether the sentence survives.
His standing advice to prospective students concerns languages, and he gives it whether or not people want to hear it. Greek and Hebrew are the two courses students most often avoid and most often regret avoiding, because they are the two that are effectively impossible to acquire later while working full time in a church.
- Education
- Ph.D. in New Testament Studies, University of St Andrews · Th.M., Dallas Theological Seminary · B.A. in Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
- Credentials
- Former professor of New Testament at multiple seminaries · Published research in early Christian history and textual criticism · Working competence in Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew
- Expertise
- New Testament studies, biblical languages, textual criticism, historical theology, apologetics methodology
- Covers on this site
- Biblical and theological accuracy site-wide, plus apologetics, hermeneutics, and historical theology.
Our mission
To give people entering theological education the information they need to make a decision they will still endorse in ten years. That means publishing what programs actually require, where graduates actually go, what the work actually pays, and which credentials actually gate which roles. It also means saying plainly when the answer is that you should not enroll.
We would rather lose a reader than let someone spend three years and forty thousand dollars discovering something a paragraph could have told them. There are situations where our advice is straightforwardly not to enroll, and we publish those in full rather than burying them.
Editorial policy
We separate three categories of statement and label them, on every page. This is the whole of our editorial method and we think it should be standard practice.
| Category | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Institutional fact | Facts an institution publishes about its own program, presented as such and linked directly to the institution’s page so the reader can verify them. |
| Our research | Findings from our own surveys and index work, named, dated, and reported with sample size and method. Never presented as general knowledge. |
| Editorial opinion | Our assessment, always inside a box labeled as our position, never mixed into a factual paragraph without marking. |
| What we do not know | Stated as unknown. Where a category has few programs, we publish the short honest list rather than padding it. |
| Corrections | Made on notification. Program details change constantly and our database is compiled rather than authoritative. |
| Money | No institution pays for coverage, ranking position, or description. Every listing links to the school rather than to a lead form. |
Our research
We conduct and publish two original research programs, and we describe their methods rather than asking to be taken on trust. Both are covered in full on our research page.
Christian Ministry and Theology Graduate Outcomes Survey 2026
A survey of 1,083 graduates who completed a theology or ministry credential between 2020 and 2025, conducted January to March 2026. It measured placement rate and time to placement, compensation by credential level, career destination, in-demand skills, and the gap between training received and training needed. Headline findings: 82 percent placed within 9 months, 89 percent called hands-on ministry experience critical or very important, and 63 percent of churches reported difficulty finding graduates with practical ministry skills.
Theology Program Quality Index 2026
A seven-factor evaluation framework applied to our full program database, with weights calibrated against a deep-evaluation cohort of 218 programs assessed in detail. The factors and their weights are published in full on our methodology page, and every score is computed from attributes institutions publish about their own programs, which means anyone can reproduce our arithmetic and disagree with it specifically.
How the site is organized
Fourteen rankings
By degree level, specialization, and delivery format, all from the same database and index.
CareersTen career guides
Compensation, pathways, credentials, and an honest account of each role.
CredentialsSix credential guides
Ordination, chaplaincy, counseling licensure, and the bodies that grant them.
StatesFifty-one state guides
Local programs, denominational landscape, and regional ministry context.
ResourcesSeven long-form guides
The decisions that determine whether a theological education pays off.
ResearchOriginal research
Our survey and index work, with method, sample, and full findings.
Frequently asked questions
Who runs ChristianDegree.org?
Three co-founders: Steve Williams (D.Min. Fuller, M.Div. Gordon-Conwell, twenty-five years in pastoral ministry and seminary teaching), Maria Scott (Ph.D. Christian Education, Biola, eighteen years in Christian higher education including a term as Dean of Students), and John Chu (Ph.D. New Testament, University of St Andrews, Th.M. Dallas, twenty years teaching New Testament at seminaries). Each owns a defined section of the site and reviews claims within their competence.
How do you make money?
Not from the institutions we cover. No school pays for coverage, for a ranking position, or for a favorable description, and every program listing links to the institution’s own page rather than to a lead-generation form. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page before it changes anywhere else.
Where does your data come from?
Two sources, kept separate. Program records come from institutions’ own published program pages, compiled into a database of 2,842 programs at 481 institutions across 45 states. Outcomes data comes from our own Christian Ministry and Theology Graduate Outcomes Survey 2026, covering 1,083 graduates surveyed January to March 2026. We name and date our own research rather than presenting it as general knowledge.
Do you favor any denomination or tradition?
We cover institutions across the full range of Christian traditions and we do not rank on theological position. Denominational affiliation carries 12 points in our index, but the factor measures whether a program states a tradition and documents a route into its ordination process, not which tradition it is. Where traditions genuinely differ on a question, we describe the disagreement rather than resolving it.
What if you get something wrong?
Tell us and we will correct it. Program details change constantly, and our database is compiled rather than authoritative. Every listing links to the institution’s own page precisely so that the reader can check us. We would rather publish a correction than defend an error.
Why should I trust a website over an admissions office?
You should not trust either uncritically. An admissions office knows its program better than we do and has an interest in your enrolling. We have no interest in where you enroll and a documented method you can check. Use both, and give the most weight to the things you verify yourself: the supervised ministry requirement in hours, your denomination’s written recognition of the institution, and accreditation confirmed with the accrediting body.