FOR CHRISTIAN COACHES, COUNSELORS & PASTORAL LEADERS
A practitioner's guide to the Greatest Commandment Assessment™
A research-grounded way to bring a whole-person, theologically coherent wellbeing assessment into your work with clients. Free, with a complete guide to introducing it, reading a client's profile, and pointing toward formation.
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WHY THIS EXISTS
You already know the tension.
You work with people who are, by their own account, followers of Christ. Yet the frameworks you were trained to use treat faith as background noise at best, and a clinical complication at worst.
The tools built for Christian contexts often lack the psychological rigor to be useful, or drift so quickly into devotional territory that the assessment work stops before it starts.
The Greatest Commandment Assessment was built to close that gap: a research-grounded instrument that gives you and your client a shared, theologically coherent language for talking about wellbeing, and a structured way to see where a person is thriving, where they are stuck, and what their formation might need next.
WHAT’S INSIDE
A complete, practice-ready guide.
Written for three overlapping audiences, with the differences named directly where they matter.
01
The model practitioners can work with
How the Greatest Commandment Model™ is structured, what covenantal wellbeing means, and why it gives you something other tools do not.
02
What the assessment measures
The seven dimensions, the seven-point scale, and how to read score ranges as descriptive rather than evaluative.
03
Administering and introducing it
How to frame the assessment as reflection rather than a test, and how to situate it within work you are already doing together.
04
Interpreting a client's profile
Reading the whole profile before any single score, with four illustrative patterns and how to open the conversation.
05
Mapping results to formation pathways
How dimension scores point toward the twenty-eight-day pathways, and how to make a recommendation as an invitation, not an assignment.
06
Scope of practice and when to refer
What the assessment is and is not appropriate for, role-specific boundaries, and recognizing when to refer.
WHO IT’S FOR
Built for the people doing the caring.
COACHES & MENTORS
A shared framework from the start
Fits naturally into a discovery session or early engagement, giving you and your client language for dimensions of their life they may not yet have words for.
COUNSELORS & THERAPISTS
A formative tool, not a clinical one
Complements the therapeutic relationship as a wellbeing and formation tool, distinct from any formal clinical assessment you use, supporting self-awareness rather than diagnosis.
PASTORAL LEADERS
Structure for the care you already give
A theologically grounded language for pastoral care and spiritual direction. No clinical training required, only curiosity, patience, and conviction.
THE INSTRUMENT
Seven dimensions of whole-person wellbeing.
Organized around Luke 10:27, with its dimensions identified from within the structure of the passage rather than mapped onto it from outside.
The foundational covenantal relationship with God; the organizing dimension from which all others draw their meaning.
Love the Lord
Internal orientation toward God; the domain of intention, desire, motive, and purpose.
Heart
Emotional and affective life; the felt experience of living in relationship with God and others.
Soul
Cognitive and interpretive faculties; how one reasons, evaluates, and understands through a faith-formed lens.
Mind
Active capacity and agency; the stewardship of energy, ability, and effort in service of love.
Strength
Reception of God's declared worth over one's own life; honest self-regard grounded in the image of God.
Love Yourself
Active, Christlike extension of goodwill and commitment toward others, grounded in their dignity as image-bearers.
Love Others
HELD WITH INTEGRITY
Research-grounded, and honest about it.
The assessment is research-grounded, not yet formally validated. The model emerged from a directed qualitative content analysis of peer-reviewed Christian wellbeing literature, producing a theoretically robust construct structure.
The full battery of psychometric validation, including confirmatory factor analysis, test-retest reliability, and criterion validity, is underway. Every practitioner who introduces it and every client who completes it is contributing to the evidence base that will get it there.
Use it for what it is: a research-grounded instrument for formative self-reflection, coaching conversations, and pastoral care. Held with appropriate clinical humility, it will serve your clients well.
COMMON QUESTION
What practitioners ask first.
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Not yet. It is research-grounded, built on a directed qualitative content analysis of peer-reviewed Christian wellbeing literature. The full validation battery, including confirmatory factor analysis, test-retest reliability, and criterion validity, is underway. Use it with confidence in coaching, pastoral care, and formation contexts, and be honest with clinically sophisticated clients about where validation currently stands.
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No. It is a research-grounded wellbeing instrument for self-reflection, coaching, and pastoral care. It does not produce clinical findings, identify disorders, or replace any professional assessment. Refer to a licensed professional when a conversation surfaces concerns that warrant evaluation.
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It is grounded in core doctrines orthodox Christianity holds across its major traditions: Trinitarianism, Christian anthropology, and the dignity of persons as bearers of the image of God. Practitioners from mainline Protestant, evangelical, and broader orthodox backgrounds should find it coherent. It does not adjudicate differences between traditions.
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It is designed for professing Christians, because its constructs presuppose a personal relationship with Jesus. It can be useful in conversations with seekers as a way of describing what Christian wellbeing looks like, but that is a different use than administering it as a wellbeing assessment. -
It is not designed to replace any tool you use well. Those instruments describe how a person is wired or motivated. This one adds a theologically grounded picture of where a person is currently oriented across the whole of what the Greatest Commandment asks. Used together, they give a richer picture than either alone.
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It is free and entirely web-based. Clients complete 52 items in about ten to fifteen minutes and receive their dimension scores immediately, with a full narrative report delivered by email. A free account is optional and lets a client retake the assessment each quarter to track how their profile shifts over time.
GET STARTED
Bring it into your practice.
The people you serve deserve a framework that takes their whole life seriously, including the part oriented toward God. The guide gives you a structured, research-grounded way to see it clearly.
Get the guide PDF and occasional updates as the practitioner tier develops. Unsubscribe anytime.