A Practical and Affordable Seminary Education
Getting a Seminary Education Can Feel Out of Reach
Are you concerned about going into debt?
The tuition of seminaries has skyrocketed over the past several years. As a result, students often find themselves with huge amounts of debt by the time they graduate. At the Heartland School of Ministry, we’ve set tuition at an extremely affordable rate. The cost of our two-year program is $4,000 per year for a total of $8,000 for the entire program. This is a third of the cost of other comparable institutions. When students want to be trained and educated for work in the kingdom of God, we don’t believe money should be a barrier for them.
Are you worried you'd have to quit your job or move?
To pursue theological education, students often have to uproot their lives, quit their job or go part-time in order to attend classes. The schedule of our seminary program is practical. Students participate in an extended classroom tutorial on nights and weekends. This allows students to get training without totally upending their current schedules. We have classroom locations in Manhattan and Kansas City. We also have online classes available.
Does a large seminary institution feel impersonal?
Our faculty care deeply and pour themselves into the lives of our students. Our curriculum is structured such that you continue on with professors throughout the whole course of the two-year curriculum instead of spending only a few months with a professor before moving on. This allows deep friendships to form between students and professors that last long after students graduate.
Are you wanting to be mentored throughout the process?
All of our students chose a mentor in their ministry field. Students meet weekly with that mentor in one-on-one meetings to grow spiritually and to discuss challenges they face in their own personal ministry. The early apostles were trained for ministry through the close, personal mentoring of Jesus. We believe Christian higher education should do the same.
Do you want to gain ministry experience while you study?
As part of our curriculum, all of our students are required to be engaged in ministry in a local body. This can be in full-time ministry, bi-vocational ministry, or on a volunteer basis. As students learn theology and ministry skills in the classroom, they immediately get to apply what they’re learning in real ministry settings. They then get to deepen the learning experience as they meet weekly with a mentor discussing the successes and challenges that they experience in ministry.
Do you want a seminary education that's practical?
Seminaries are notorious for focusing too much on theoretical learning and not enough on the practical application of that learning. All of our faculty have many years of experience in ministry. Their experience allows them to bring the theoretical learning of the classroom into practical application in ministry settings.
Many Christians want a seminary education to equip them for a more fruitful personal ministry, but it feels out of reach. The Heartland School of Ministry offers an affordable and practical education to prepare you for a lifetime of ministry in the Kingdom of God.
-Paulo Barros, Worship and Arts Director at Colonial Presbyterian Church
Our Tuition Rates
The challenges to contemporary ministry are tremendous. We believe financial barriers to training should not be one of them. Learn more about our affordable program.
A Letter from the Dean
I have been involved in both ministry and theological education for almost 30 years now. Over that time, I’ve talked with countless pastors and other ministry professionals about their seminary experience Nearly all of them have expressed disappointment: It was too expensive, too time-consuming, too difficult to juggle with other responsibilities, too theologically skewed … BUT primarily, too impractical; too unrelated to what one actually does in day-to-day ministry. I agree. I think theological education is geared more for the teachers than the students. And the teachers, by the way, are usually people who have never pastored or done in-the-field ministry…
Classroom studies alone do not adequately prepare one for the challenges of real-life ministry. There should, in fact, be 5 equally important components in the preparation; namely:
- Academic Discipline
- Spiritual Growth
- Character Development
- Practical Experience
- Mentor Supervision
Traditional seminaries, whether on campus or online, are only designed to address the first of these components. But theoretical learning is disconnected from application. The spiritual growth and character development required for ministry are usually assumed, while the acquisition of many skills necessary to succeed in ministry are often deferred for later on-the-job experimentation.
HSM provides a first-class seminary education in the Kansas City and Manhattan area, which is focused not merely on the acquisition of information, but more importantly, on how to apply what is learned to day-to-day ministry. In addition, the HSM program creates the opportunity for intentional character development and appropriate practical experience through a mentoring agreement set up with seasoned ministry professionals.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that unless you are planning to pursue doctoral studies, or you have specific denominational ordination requirements, you will not find a theological training program that provides a more reasonably-priced, more practical education.
-Kent Mathews Ph.D.
Classes in Kansas City and Online
Our ministry partners at Colonial Presbyterian have been gracious to offer us use of their facilities for our classrooms for our Master of Arts classes. Avoiding the cost of purchasing and maintaining large facilities is one of the main reasons we are able to keep tuition so affordable. All of our Master of Divinity classes are offered online.
Colonial Presbyterian’s Wornall Campus
9500 Wornall Rd, Kansas City, MO 64114