Professional counselors are familiar with a variety of assessment instruments that they use in their practice. This includes personality tests like the MBTI, or pathology measures like the Beck Depression Scales, or even interest inventories like the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). What makes these assessments valuable is that they have good psychometric properties, that is, they have validity and reliability. The DDA is proud of its psychometric properties and we have included a report on our statistics on this site.
But while the DDA shares these properties with other personality instruments, it is different in that it remains a confidential assessment and the scores are not revealed to the counselor or mentor unless the individual has the confidence to share them during the counseling sessions.
When a counselor or mentor decides that a discipleship assessment would be appropriate for their sessions, he/she would direct the person to the website and ask them to complete the DDA. At the next session, the disciple would bring their confidential assessment with them and begin the discussion of their road to healthy discipleship
- Ask them to identify their 5 strongest Outcomes and rejoice with them at their achievements
- Ask them to Identify one of the lower Outcome scores that they would like to discuss
- Spend time with them in the scriptures and engage them to see how this impacts their Christian witness in their life. We also have a list of books that we feel can be helpful to assist in this journey.
- Between your sessions give them homework to read, study, and meditate on the identified Outcome until they are able to understand how they need to discipline themselves to achieve that Outcome in their daily life
- Progress as fast as the context allows to deal with more Outcomes
- After a period of growth and development you can ask them to return to the website and take the free, re-assessment. The re-assessment will give the new scores and compare them with the ones that they initially got. At this point, you may find that some other scores are now in need of attention, and that your counselee has new strong points. Discipleship is a dynamic process that requires us to constantly adapt our responses to changing life circumstances. This is how you can help the body of Christ to show what “walking in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16) is actually all about!
