Students enroll in ChIME’s Interfaith Ministry program for both personal growth and also professional development. The program has ample room for discovery, skill-building, and practice for students seeking to clarify and deepen their own spiritual path as well as those who are seeking to serve their communities as interfaith ministers and community chaplains.

Weekly classes and monthly workshops introduce students to a diversity of ideas, practices, beliefs and theories. Readings and reflection papers invite students to explore more deeply and reflect on how new information resonates with their embedded theology and their experiences in the world. Meanwhile class discussion and service hours provide opportunities to listen, learn, speak, explore, and practice ways of being in compassionate, welcoming relationship with others. Throughout their learning journey, students are supported by faculty and staff, as well as by the members of their cohort, either meeting together weekly online or in-person in Portland, ME.

Because the curriculum is cyclical and experiential, all students participate in all aspects of the program. The academic year runs from September- June. While most students progress through the program sequentially, a student will occasionally take a year or two away from their studies between the first and second year or extend the responsibilities of the second year into a third year.