How to Become a Pastor

Step one: test the call before you finance it

The first step is not an application. It is a year of real, unglamorous ministry responsibility in a local congregation, undertaken specifically to find out whether you like the work rather than the idea of the work.

Lead something with a defined scope and real accountability: a small group, a youth ministry, a service team, a class. Do it for at least a year, through the point where it stops being novel and becomes obligation. Pay attention to what you feel in month nine rather than month one. Ministry is largely repetition, administration, and presence, and the question is whether you find that meaningful or merely tolerable.

Our 2026 graduate outcomes survey found that graduates with substantial ministry involvement before enrolling reported markedly higher satisfaction with their decision than those without it. This is the cheapest discernment available and it is routinely skipped in favor of enrolling in a three-year degree to find out, which is the most expensive possible way to run the experiment.

• Lead something with defined scope for at least a year
• Ask your pastor directly what they would tell you if they were being blunt
• Talk to two ministers who left the profession, not only to ones who stayed
• Notice how you feel in month nine, not month one
• Sit with your denomination’s credentialing office before you apply anywhere
• Consider a certificate before a degree if you want a lower-cost test

Step two: get your denomination’s written requirements

This is the step that separates people who finish in eight years from people who finish in eleven, and it costs one phone call. Contact your denomination’s office of ministry, vocations, or credentialing and ask for the written education and ordination requirements. Not a general description. The document.

What you are establishing: what degree is required and whether a specific credential like the MDiv is named; whether your prospective institutions are recognized; what polity or confessional coursework is required and where it is taken; what the candidacy process involves and when it should begin; and what examinations, assessments, and supervised requirements sit alongside the degree.

The most common failure is a student enrolling at a seminary they like, in a tradition they were raised in, and discovering in year three that the denomination requires coursework the seminary does not offer, or does not recognize the institution. Both are solvable when identified early and expensive when identified late.

Step three: the undergraduate degree, and what to study

A bachelor degree is the baseline for nearly every graduate theological program. What you study is more open than most prospective pastors assume, and our advice runs against the intuitive choice.

A theology or biblical studies undergraduate degree gives you four extra years in the text, an early start on Greek and Hebrew, and faculty who know you well enough to write substantive references for seminary. Those are real advantages, particularly the languages, which are effectively impossible to acquire later while working.

A degree in education, business, social work, counseling, nursing, or a language gives you a portable professional skill. That matters because a large share of congregations cannot fund a full-time salaried pastor, because bivocational ministry is the majority experience rather than a fallback, and because it removes the financial fragility that ends careers. Our survey found no compensation penalty for a non-theology undergraduate degree among pastors. If there is any uncertainty about the durability of your call, this is the lower-risk route and saying so is not cynicism.

Step four: the Master of Divinity, chosen on the right criteria

The MDiv is typically three years and 72 to 90 credit hours, and it is the credential most ordination tracks are built around. Choosing between programs should be driven by a short list of factors, most of which are not the ones prospective students weigh.

The factors that matter: denominational recognition, confirmed in writing; the supervised ministry requirement stated in hours and how placement is arranged; whether biblical languages are required or optional; total cost after aid rather than sticker price; and delivery format matched to your actual life, since online and hybrid options are now offered by most established seminaries.

The factors that matter less than students think: campus aesthetics, the prominence of individual faculty you will likely not study under, national reputation outside your tradition, and library size in an era where most research is digital. Ask each program for its field education requirement in hours and its job placement record for the last two graduating classes, and treat a vague answer as an answer.

• Denominational recognition, verified in writing with your credentialing office
• Supervised ministry hours required, and who arranges placement
• Whether Greek and Hebrew are required or optional
• Total cost after aid, including denominational and congregational scholarships
• Delivery format that matches your actual circumstances, not your ideal ones
• Where the last two graduating classes are serving now

Step five: run ordination concurrently, starting now

This is the single most important sequencing point on this page. Ordination is not a step that follows graduation. It is a multi-year process that runs alongside the degree, and most traditions want to observe candidates over a period of years rather than assess them once at the end.

A typical process includes entering candidacy or inquiry status with a local governing body, psychological assessment, a background check, a supervised internship, written examinations in Bible, theology, church history, polity, and sacraments, an oral examination before a committee, and a final vote. Some traditions additionally require a call from a congregation before ordination can be completed.

Candidates who enter candidacy in their first year of seminary generally complete ordination within months of graduating. Candidates who begin in their final year commonly add one to three years, during which they hold a degree, frequently service student debt, and cannot yet be called to the roles the degree was for. Against a median MDiv compensation of $65,000, an eighteen-month delay is a substantial and entirely avoidable financial loss.

Step six: field education, and how to get one that counts

Field education is where the degree becomes competence, and its quality varies enormously between placements even within the same program. Eighty-nine percent of graduates in our 2026 survey called hands-on ministry experience critical or very important to their career, and it is the component employers say is missing.

A placement that counts has three features. Someone experienced observes you doing the actual work: preaching, leading a meeting, sitting with a family in crisis. That person gives you feedback that is specific and occasionally uncomfortable. And you carry genuine responsibility rather than shadowing someone who carries it.

A placement that does not count looks like attendance plus a reflection paper. If your supervisor has never watched you preach and never told you something you did not want to hear, you have completed a requirement rather than received training. Push for a different placement, and be specific about why when you ask.

• A supervisor who observes you doing the work, not one who reads about it afterward
• Feedback that is specific and sometimes uncomfortable
• Genuine responsibility, including things that will go wrong
• Exposure to conflict, administration, and pastoral crisis, not only to teaching
• A written learning covenant with defined outcomes
• A supervisor trained to supervise, rather than merely willing to sign a form

Step seven: the first call, and what to negotiate

Most first calls are associate positions or small congregations, frequently rural, frequently bivocational. This is the normal shape of an early ministry career and it is not a demotion from anything. It is where the craft is learned, at a scale where mistakes are survivable.

Negotiate the package rather than the headline number, because ministry compensation is unusually structured. Ask for the full offer in writing, itemized: base salary, designated housing allowance or parsonage arrangement, whether the church contributes toward self-employment tax, health coverage and at what percentage, denominational pension participation and employer contribution rate, continuing education budget and protected days, sabbatical policy in writing, and vacation and study leave counted separately.

The most common financial regret we hear from pastors five years in is not that they were underpaid. It is that they never asked what the offer actually contained, and discovered later that two offers they had compared as equivalent differed by fifteen thousand dollars a year in real terms.

Frequently asked questions