The Future of Ministry Is Interreligious: What an MDiv Effectiveness Assessment Reveals about Preparing the Next Generation of Interreligious Professionals

Interreligious Studies is increasingly charged with developing new models of formation and professional preparation amid shifting religious demographics, rising nonreligion, and intensifying pressures on higher education and adjacent professional fields. This paper reports results from a comprehensive MDiv Effectiveness Assessment at a Divinity School attached to a Research University that is intentionally multireligious and multi-vocational. Ministry formation (inside and beyond congregational settings) requires interreligious competence as a baseline professional capacity, not an elective specialization. Using a pragmatic, mixed-methods design (institutional data analysis; qualitative analysis of direct measures of student work; stakeholder surveys, interviews, and focus groups), we identify what most strongly predict vocational readiness for interreligious practice and teaching. Findings highlight transferable competencies cultivated through multireligious cohort learning, practice-facing pedagogy, and field-based formation where religious difference is operational. We offer grounded implications for curriculum design, faculty development, and evaluation strategies for formation for applied interreligious leadership.