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March 24, 2026

Complete Your Accelerated Master’s and Bachelor’s Seminary Degree

Written By Freddy Cardoza

Whether you’re about to start your theological education or you’re already scouting out graduate schools, you will probably face this question sometime soon: How fast can I get a master’s degree?

Attending seminary is different here at Grace.

Theological education for the last century has looked fairly similar: taking years of school, studying Greek and Hebrew, spending most of your day in a library, barely making ends meet, reading, writing, preaching, and sometimes enduring periods of isolation from others.

There are some aspects of theological education that may never change, like the subjects taught and the gospel proclaimed, but as the landscape of education transforms, our seminary schools has adapted to help make education more accessible. One of our attempts to address these changes at Grace Theological Seminary is our five-year Accelerated Master of Divinity program.

Get an Accelerated MDiv in just five years!

One of the critiques of seminary education is that it takes too long. At best, traditional seminary education takes three years. As a seminary graduate, I speak from experience; my M.Div. degree took me over three years, and at the time, it really worked for me.

There is nothing I would change about my theological education. However, if there was an option to complete both my bachelor’s and my accelerated MDiv in five years, I would have gone with the accelerated master’s degree.

How we do seminary at Grace

At Grace, we are innovative thinkers. The way of Grace leads us to weigh questions and create solutions. We don’t settle for what has been; we forge ahead and ask about what could be. And so, we have come up with a solution that allows our students to use their time and money wisely. While they are working on their undergraduate degree over the first four years, they begin taking seminary classes in years three and four. By the time they finish their fourth year, Grace students are able to completely focus on their accelerated MDiv and finish during the fifth year. This shaves two years or more off the time it would have taken to get the same degrees at a different school.

Grace is able to make this work because our undergraduate college and our seminary have partnered together to design an efficient program that a seminary alone cannot do. And before you start wondering, we are not cutting any corners to make this work. Our degrees are fully accredited programs; our bachelor of arts requires 120 credit hours, and our accelerated Master’s of Divinity requires 90. By reimagining the way we schedule classes and rearranging the existing program maps, we were able to make this decision a no-brainer for students and parents. 

Students, move through your programs more quickly to step into the ministry God called you to and save money as you do.

Parents, you may not know that half of all church pastors in the United States do not have a seminary degree. By completing our Accelerated MDiv, your child will be better prepared, more confident, and more financially free after coming to Grace for ministry training. This is just our way. 

Take a Look!

If you’re still asking, How fast can I get a master’s degree? Take a minute to compare how the Blended Program at Grace stacks up against other strategies to earn your accelerated Master’s of Divinity. I think you’ll be impressed. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out, and let’s start a conversation.

Lane Lingofelter

Lane Lingofelter

Lane is the Director of the School of Ministry Accelerated Program, an accelerated Bachelors/Masters program. He gives oversight to the operations and student support of the program. He is also a Program Support Manager for Deploy.  He has taught a variety of courses within the school of ministry studies since 2020. He has served as a pastor since 2016. Throughout his ministry, he desires to continually exalt Jesus Christ and to point others to Him (Jn 3:30). His passion is to help students grow in Christ, by connecting their profession and practice (Jam 2:14-26). He is passionate about leading others to worship the Lord and to see His magnificent worth and beauty, because in Christ we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing (Eph 1:3). Previously, Lane has over twenty-five years of business leadership experience in a variety of management and ownership capacities. His research interests include New Testament, Pauline studies, the epistle to the Ephesians, warfare, early Christian worship, the Psalms, intertextuality, and the reliability of the Scriptures. He enjoys traveling and spending time with his family.

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