Spiritual Growth Garden

Many Christians walk through different seasons and callings, but most can only evaluate their spiritual state by subjective feeling. "I feel like I grew this year" — but where exactly? What blind spots remain? Which "thorns" are quietly hindering me? Nobody has an objective mirror.

While studying at DTS I noticed it again and again: the Church has rich exegetical, devotional, and theological resources — but no tool that helps believers diagnose and track their own spiritual life. The inspiration came from medical check-ups: not to label, but to make the unseen visible.

Inspired by the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9), I framed the tool as a garden: spiritual life is organic, seasonal, deeply dependent on the Word; only God gives the growth, but we are called to be faithful stewards of the soil.

• Everyday believers who are born again and hungry for deeper growth, but unsure where to walk next.
• Cross-season disciples recalibrating after a major life shift — a newborn, a new church, a new graduate program, a new city.
• Church staff and small-group leaders who want a data starting point for shepherding their people.
• Seminary students, church leaders, gospel workers — anyone wanting to internalize theological training into trackable growth markers.

• Three assessments mapped to three layers of soil: Spiritual Health (identifying blind spots and "thorns" that hinder intimacy with God), Spiritual Fruits (cultivating a life that visibly reflects Christ), Spiritual Roots (deepening foundation in biblical truth and the local church).
• Every assessment answer flows through a LangGraph multi-agent runtime + Gemini for semantic analysis, generating a personalized growth path.
• Results are compared against the Dallas Theological Seminary 21-article Doctrinal Statement as a "plumb line" so you can see where your personal theology or practice may have drifted from historical biblical standards.
• The assessments are not meant to define your identity; your identity is found in Christ alone. They simply help you navigate the changing seasons of life — from the desert to the harvest — with clarity, joy, and readiness.

• Health / Fruits / Roots assessments, each with built-in LLM semantic analysis and personalized growth recommendations.
• Daily check-in and calendar tracking — making devotion visible as continuity.
• Assessment archive — results saved, reviewable, comparable, so you can trace your trajectory across seasons.
• Mustard Seed Kids module — Bible-based Mandarin learning for children (now spun out as a standalone iOS app).
• Multi-strategy auth — email/password, Google OAuth, guest, reset.
• Bilingual i18n wired in from the very first line of code.
• Growth visualization (Recharts), turning data into charts you can actually read.

• Jan 2026 · MVP shipped; all three assessment systems live.
• Feb 2026 · Deployed to GCP (Cloud Run + Cloud SQL + GCS + Cloud Build) with sub-second cold starts.
• Live at spiritualgrowthgarden.com.
• Mar 2026 · Kids module spun out as the standalone iOS app "Mustard Seed Chinese."
• Currently in public beta; signup is open and feedback is welcome.

• Deeper assessments: prayer life, Bible-reading habits, stewardship, church involvement.
• Group features: small-group encouragement, church-level dashboards, pastor mode.
• Mobile apps: native iOS / Android clients sharing the same backend.
• Localization beyond English / Chinese: Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian believers.
• Integration with Gospel Sharing Dojo: turning the Dojo into the "action exit" after each assessment.
• Open contribution channel: inviting other seminary students and pastors to iterate the assessment questions.