Home -- About

evelopment Testing Services LLC, was founded in 1992 by its current President, John Shelhamer. As an ordained minister, John has been working in and with churches since he graduated from seminary in 1979.

In the late 80's John found himself working for a Christian school consulting firm, Development Marketing Associates. While there, he was instrumental in developing parent & employee surveys. In 1992 DMA spun off the surveys and soon John began developing surveys for Christian churches as well.

At one time John heard a speaker explain that a leader's most important job is to define reality as it is today, and as it should be, and then plot a course to get there. Since that time he has had a passion to provide leaders with an accurate assessment of their ministry in a format that enables them to plot a course for the future they envision. That is how the DTS by-line: "Decision-Making Solutions for Ministry Professionals" evolved.

From the very outset he realized that even clients who could ask good questions had difficulty understanding the answers, as well as interpreting graphs apart from their own presuppositions about the church. Because of this he developed a system for taking the complex results of a survey and placing them in decision-making summaries that have enabled pastors and leaders to understand the data without bias and to confidently make informed decisions.

Since those beginnings DTS has surveyed many hundreds of Christian churches and ministries and hundreds of thousands of individuals. Repeat clients and surveys for consulting firms continue to be a large portion of DTS's ongoing business.