The Assessment of Readiness for the Professional Practice of Ministry project, sponsored by the Association of Theological Schools, studied methods for determining a person's readiness to enter the mimtry and perform effectively. Simultaneously, the Lutheran Seminarian Project assessed the needs and strengths of beginning seminary students. Both projects involved the empirical identification of appropriate criteria followed by development of evaluation methods; the same research methods were used for each. The development and selection of criteria involved a survey of lay and clergy observers, development of questionnaire items and a secondary survey to rate those items for face validity, cluster and factor analyses of the item ratings, and the development of the final criterion-rating instrument. The second stage of the projects involved selection and development of assessment methods. Three methods were chosen: (1) paper and pencil case items, each consisting of a paragraph describing an actual situation that confronted a young pastor; (2) structured interviews, permitting a student to talk freely, completely fashioning his or her own response; and (3) behaviorally anchored rating scales. Reliability estimates and a description of the scaling of interview data are presented. A number of test items are included. (BW)