DMin Semester at a Glance

The Doctor of Ministry program at Houston Theological Seminary is designed to be a formative experience for Christian leaders. The core program can be completed in as few as three years. Most courses are semester-long and hybrid in format, focused on one-week residential intensives. Students only need to come to Houston one week each semester, and the rest will be accessible through synchronous video (i.e., zoom). So what would a typical semester look like?

For those planning to finish in 3 years, you would take 5 hours per semester over 6 semesters. Those 5 hours each semester will include a content course (3 hrs) and the research seminar or project (2 hrs).

Key Dates for the 2022-2023 year (tentative):

Fall 2022 Intensive: October 10-14
Spring 2023 Intensive: March 6-10

Content Course (3 hrs)

Through the DMin program, students will take 6 content courses–3 core courses and 3 track courses. These courses proceed over the course of the semester in the fall and spring, and they will be focused on the one-week intensive when students will travel to Houston. Accordingly, courses will have three stages of progression:

Preliminary work – done at a distance, with some zoom sessions
One-week – done in person in Houston
Concluding work – done at a distance, with some zoom sessions

Research Seminar/Project (2 hrs)

The research seminar will focus on exposing students to current research trends and to help them progress towards completion of their own doctoral project. Local students may attend in person, but all students will be able to attend all the seminars through synchronous video so you don’t have to come to campus. These seminars will meet about twice a month for about 1.5 hours each. They will include two key components:

Engaging Contemporary Research. Building on our current New Testament seminar where faculty, invited guests, and students present their on-going research, students will encounter cutting edge research from top level scholars. You won’t just learn ideas after the fact, but you’ll interact with scholars as they are refining their ideas in the process of research.
Personal Research Progression. From the beginning of the program, students will have a guided journey towards finishing your own research project. Over the first two years (four semesters) students will participate in the Research Seminar, where you will progressively determine and refine your research project. The goal is that you have not only chosen a topic but already written chapters towards your project by the end of those two years. In the third year, students will focus independently on their Project guided in a dual supervision process (with a primary supervisor and a faculty research supervisor). The primary supervisor will be a subject expert and does not need to be an HTS faculty member.

More Information

Explore more detailed information about the DMin program:

Feel free to contact Richard Olds, the administrator of the DMin program, directly so he can help shape a program that fits your interests, oldsrd@HC.edu, or call the DMin office at 281-649-3152.