If you have an interest in serving God and our country as an Army chaplain, here are some pointers for beginning your journey to soldier ministry. These suggestions are based on my own experience and knowledge and do not necessarily reflect official Army doctrine or policy.

Chaplaincy qualifications

To serve as a chaplain, you must fulfill these basic requirements:

1. Be ordained.
2. Receive an ecclesiastical endorsement for chaplaincy from your denomination or endorsing organization.
3. Have a bachelor degree of at least 120 semester hours from an accredited school.
4. Have a Master of Divinity from an accredited school (or a graduate degree in theological studies, with at least 72 semester hours).
5. Be able to pass a military entrance physical exam.
6. Be able to receive a Secret security clearance.
7. Have ministry experience.

Chaplain candidate qualifications

If you do not yet meet all the requirements for appointment as a chaplain, you can work on completing them while you train for military ministry by serving in the Army chaplain candidate program.

To serve as a chaplain candidate, you must fulfill these basic requirements:

1. Receive an ecclesiastical approval for the chaplain candidate program from your denomination or organization.
2. Have a bachelor degree of at least 120 semester hours from an accredited school, or be in your last semester of undergraduate studies.
3. Be enrolled in graduate theological studies at an accredited school, or have been accepted for admission to such a program in the next enrollment period of the school, or have completed such a program and be actively engaged in a process leading toward ordination.
4. Be able to pass a military entrance physical exam.

From this point forward, I will focus on information for chaplain candidates, beginning with inquiring about the program to accessioning to active duty. Some of this information may be useful for persons who already have completed seminary and are ordained and, thus, are seeking to be directly accessioned to the Chaplain Corps. Some of it may also be useful for chaplains and chaplain candidates in the Air Force and Navy. However, I am specifically targeting Army chaplain candidates.

Please note that this is an ongoing series of short articles. In order to see the list of articles available to date, you must view this article in its archived format by clicking the title of the article. At the bottom of each article in the series is a list of available articles. You may leave comments or ask questions by filling in the comment box at the bottom of any article or you may contact me directly.

I hope you will find this series helpful.