Why Develop a Disciple Maker Assessment Like This?
Disciple makers struggle to find common markers and common vernacular to describe the process of disciple making. This was the goal in developing a commonly available assessment tool focused on disciple making. Our online tool is designed to help Christians develop an objective assessment of themselves as disciple makers. By establishing profiles and criteria, we create a benchmark—an objective standard that helps us compare our personal standard with that of today’s effective disciple makers.
Once you establish a baseline, you can assess ways to grow and improve. Essentially, you’ll gain a sense of the necessary resources for helping you on your journey to become the best possible disciple maker. That is the ultimate goal for developing this tool—to help each person in his or her journey make disciples as Jesus made disciples who then made disciples.
The online assessment offers five basic levels that are not as much theological in orientation (Kingdom, church, etc.,) as they are practical and measurable. This is an important point. We’re not saying our model is taught in Scripture. Rather, it’s a model that we find to be in step with what the Bible teaches. The distinction is important.
The authors of this blog intended readers of this content to take The Disciple Maker Assessment. Take the Disciple Maker Assessment here at no cost.
We have followed the general outline that aligns with Scripture, but our assessment tool is more descriptive of what we find practically in the lives of disciple makers today. We think you’ll find it helpful and biblical, but we would not bind it on others as God’s standard. Again, this is not to say that our model lacks theological support—far from it. A deeper analysis shows that our model has much in common with the disciple-making practices described in the Bible and by Jesus Himself, as the discipleship scholar Robert Coleman laid out many years ago in his seminal work, The Master Plan of Evangelism.
The goal of this assessment tool is to help you determine your personal level of maturity and competency in being used by God to effectively build up others in their relationship with Christ, and to develop their own ability to do this with others. This is what the Apostle Paul encouraged Timothy to do when he wrote: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). This is commonly called the process of making disciples who make disciples.
The assessment tool measures your level of effectiveness in making disciples. Once you understand where you currently are in this lifelong process, you can intentionally grow in ways to improve your effectiveness on this journey. Our goal is to help each person become a better disciple maker throughout his or her life.
Take this assessment for free here.
Stay tuned for more from our eBook, Becoming a Disciple Maker, which you can download free here.
Written by Bobby Harrington and Greg Wiens
Bobby Harrington is the Executive Director of Discipleship.org, a national platform, conference, and ministry that advocates for Jesus’ style of disciple making. He is the founding and lead pastor of Harpeth Christian Church (by the Harpeth River, just outside of Nashville, TN). He has a Doctor of Ministry degree in consulting and has spent years as a coach to church planters and senior pastors. He is the author of several books on discipleship, including DiscipleShift (with Jim Putman and Robert Coleman) and The Disciple Maker’s Handbook (with Josh Patrick).
Greg Wiens has been assessing leaders and organizations for over 35 years. He has worked with a gamut of organizations ranging in size and interest from Fortune 100 companies and public schools, to small non-profits and churches. He has pastored and planted churches as well as founded a number of organizations. He currently leads two missionally focused organizations: Healthy Growing Churches and Healthy Growing Leaders committed to engaging churches and leaders to multiply. Greg has co-authored two books: Dying to Restart and Daring to Disciple.
