Master of Christian Catechesis
First Professional Degree · 24 Semester Credit Hours · 6 Courses
The First Professional Degree
The Master of Christian Catechesis is a first professional degree. That designation is not administrative decoration. It is a precise description of what this credential is and what it is not.
A first professional degree is the first degree that signifies completion of the minimum academic requirements for practice of a profession. A J.D. is the first professional degree for lawyers. An M.D. is the first professional degree for physicians. Neither requires a prior graduate degree. Neither is designed to produce scholars; it is designed to produce practitioners who can do the work of the profession.
The MCC is the first professional degree for Christian catechists. It is the credential that says: this person has received the minimum formation required to practice the discipline of Christian catechesis at a professional level. They understand the whole arc of Scripture. They have studied how the Church has taught and transmitted the faith. They can interpret the biblical text with methodological rigor. They can engage the philosophical foundations of the faith without apologizing for them. They can form other believers in a coherent and comprehensive account of what Christians believe and why.
Why "First Professional Degree" Matters
Under Florida Administrative Code Rule 6E-2.004, a first professional degree at the master's level requires a minimum of 24 semester credit hours and does not require a prior baccalaureate degree. The MCC is structured precisely at 24 credits and offers four documented admissions paths, ensuring accessibility without sacrificing academic rigor. See Admissions for details.
This credential is designed for lay ministers, vocational pastors, Christian educators, homeschool parents or students who are serious about what they are doing, and any believer who wants to understand their own faith at the level it deserves to be understood. No baccalaureate degree is required for admission. The College recognizes four admissions paths, including professional ministry experience, completion of the College's Professional Diploma, and a combined education-and-experience track, so that a documented foundation is accessible to any serious student.
Program Description
The Master of Christian Catechesis is the first professional degree in the practice of catechesis. Catechesis, the systematic formation of believers in the substance and structure of the Christian faith, is the first professional ministry the early Church created. It predates the formalized priesthood, the ecumenical councils, and the creeds. The Didache, one of the oldest Christian documents outside the canon, is a catechetical manual. Despite this history, catechesis has never had a standardized professional credential. The MCC fills that role.
The program provides a comprehensive, coursework-based education through six sequential courses, each a complete model of one essential dimension of the Christian faith. Students learn the substance of the College's distinctive approach to Scripture, develop competence in its methods, and emerge equipped with a coherent theological framework rooted in the unified biblical narrative.
The MCC is open to any Christian. It serves laypersons pursuing personal enrichment, individuals preparing for catechetical ministry, and anyone who desires a thorough, structured engagement with Scripture as a unified whole.
Program Details
| Credits | 24 semester credit hours |
| Courses | 6 courses, 4 credits each |
| Duration | Approximately one to two years |
| Credential | Master of Christian Catechesis (MCC) |
| Prerequisite | High school diploma or GED, plus one of four documented admissions paths. No baccalaureate required. See Admissions. |
| Minimum Age | 18 years old |
How the Program Works
The MCC is completed in your own time, at your own pace. Students proceed one course at a time, in a fixed sequence, beginning with The Soul's Legal Status and finishing with Comparative Models. Each course must be completed and passed before the next is begun. Every course follows the same structure.
The first course, The Soul's Legal Status, is open to any student aged eighteen or older who registers with the College administration. No formal application is required. To continue into the second course and beyond, students must submit a formal application demonstrating that they qualify under one of the College's four admissions paths: a bachelor's degree, five or more years of professional ministry or teaching experience, completion of the College's Professional Diploma in Biblical Foundations, or a combination of postsecondary education and professional experience totaling at least four years. The application also requires a passing score from the first course, proof of high school completion, a letter of intent, a volunteer commitment, a non-refundable application fee of $200, and identity verification through a secure upload of a state-issued ID. See the Admissions page for full details.
What You Receive for Each Course
Course Textbook: Each course has its own textbook, written and published by Saint Luke's College of Theology, presenting the model the course teaches at the depth a practicing catechist requires. Textbooks are provided to enrolled students as part of the program.
The Four Assignments
Each four-credit course is structured around three major subjects, with each major subject representing one credit hour of student work. The fourth credit hour is carried by a synthesis project that draws the three subjects into a single coherent model in the student's own voice. The result is four assignments per course: three subject papers with accompanying videos, and one synthesis paper with an accompanying video. There are no written examinations.
| Assessment | Description |
|---|---|
| Three Subject Papers & Videos | For each of the three major subjects in the course, the student produces a written paper engaging the course content and records a video presentation of that paper on camera. AI-assisted writing is explicitly permitted for the paper; the institution acknowledges that AI tools are part of serious academic work. What AI cannot do is present the paper for the student on camera. |
| Synthesis Paper & Video | After the three subjects have been completed, the student produces a synthesis paper and accompanying video that draws the three subjects into one coherent model. This is the proof that the three subjects have become a single, integrated way of holding the course's dimension of the faith in the student's own mind. |
A student can use AI to write a paper without understanding it. A student cannot deliver three subject videos and a synthesis video in his or her own voice without understanding the material. The videos are the verification. The synthesis is the proof that the three subjects have become one coherent model in the student's mind. Rehearsal time is the learning moment.
Purpose and Outcomes
The Master of Christian Catechesis provides students with a foundational understanding of the unified biblical narrative, offering a counterbalance to conventional approaches to Christian doctrine and Scripture. Graduates carry a richer sense of the mission of Christians and the Church in the world, and emerge equipped to teach, form, and lead others in the substance of the faith.
Course Progression
Students in the Master of Christian Catechesis proceed through the curriculum one course at a time, in a fixed sequence. Each course must be completed and passed before the next is begun. The required sequence of courses is as follows:
- The Soul's Legal Status (4 credits)
- Structural Christianity (4 credits)
- Forensic Theology (4 credits)
- Catechistical Philosophy (4 credits)
- Broken Interfaces (4 credits)
- Comparative Models (4 credits)
A student may take only one course at a time. Each course must be completed with a passing score before the student may advance to the next. This structure ensures that each layer of the curriculum is fully absorbed before the next is begun.
A Note on Interpretive Honesty
This program teaches the student to identify gloss: the accumulated weight of interpretive assumptions that sit between the reader and the biblical text. Gloss enters through translation decisions, through creedal formulations, through centuries of sermonic tradition, and through the reader's own unexamined assumptions. The program trains the student to see where the English says one thing and the Hebrew or Greek says another, where a historical actor introduced a specific distortion at a specific moment, and where the tradition teaches its own conclusions as though they were the text's own words.
A program that teaches students to identify gloss in the tradition bears a particular obligation: it must not simply add its own gloss to the pile.
Saint Luke's College of Theology takes this obligation seriously. Where the program offers an interpretive reading that goes beyond the direct statement of the text, the course material is written to say so. The language is deliberate. "The text says X" means the claim is verifiable in the original languages. "Within this program's reading, X could be read as Y" means the program is offering an analytical reading supported by the evidence but not directly stated by any single passage. The distinction matters. The first is the text's authority. The second is the program's scholarship.
The program introduces concepts that will be new to many students: the directional life of the Trinity, the Archon as a jurisdictional office-holder rather than a personal name, the bene elohim as the divine council rather than cute winged messengers, the fall as a legal transfer of authority rather than merely a moral failure, salvation as jurisdictional transfer, and the structural reading of models drawn from across the canon. Each of these is grounded in the biblical text and supported by cross-canonical analysis. None of them are invented. But some of them involve an interpretive step that connects data points the text distributes across multiple books, authors, and centuries. The connection is the program's work. The data points are the text's.
The goal of this program is not to tell the student what the Bible means. The goal is to train the student to see what the Bible says, to notice where the tradition has obscured it, and to think carefully about what the architecture reveals. The program provides its best reading. The text remains the authority.