The Starter Suite:

  • Is a 7 session online course. Each session includes a 8-12 minute video and downloadable PDF to help you put into action what you learn.
  • Humanizes the process by demonstrating that ordinary people can apply simple but effective principles to accomplish extraordinary things. 
  • Helps to make the dream of launching a project possible, accessible and sustainable because it breaks everything down into doable bite-sized steps.

We help early-stage missional innovators and church leaders get their project clarified, launched and sustainable as quickly as possible. 

If you’re someone motivated by faith and wanting to start something new and sustainable that makes the world better, the Starter Suite video course is for you.

Can you relate to this?

I have ‘blinking cursor syndrome.’ I know the direction I want to take this thing, and I have all the muscle to make it happen. I just can’t….begin.


Enter The Starter Suite. For minimal cost, we'll jumpstart your idea with proven methods to get the cursor moving.

Learn the secrets to a great launch, how to create a culture of innovation within your organization, how to become financially sustainable, and so much more!

SESSION OVERVIEWS

SESSION 1: SECRETS TO A GREAT LAUNCH

So much of your project’s early success runs on momentum, buzz, and general energy that we can’t ignore the potential impact of our launch moment.

The problem is, we’re so wrapped up in the day-to-day of getting our project or missional innovation going, that we forget to leverage our launch for all it could potentially be.

So, for most of us, our launch day event falls somewhere in between cheese and crackers with a small group of friends or simply pressing “go live” on our website…then sitting back and waiting for all the sales to come rolling in. We can do better. YOU can do better. In this session, you’ll discover the secrets to a great launch.

SESSION 2: MULTIPLE REVENUE STREAMS, PT 1

The goal of these sessions is to help you plan multiple revenue streams to fund your new ministry or missional innovation. In session two, we’ll talk about the various kinds of capital you need, and how to cultivate new relationships with people who will support your ministry.

SESSION 3: MULTIPLE REVENUE STREAMS, PT 2

The goal of these sessions is to help you plan multiple revenue streams to fund your new ministry or missional innovation. In session three, we’ll help you create a multiple revenue plan for your ministry or project.

SESSION 4: HEALTHY RHYTHMS

For many generations, “self-care” was a foreign concept at best, often something to be made fun of. Sign of Weakness. More often than not, people’s neglect of healthy habits leaked out in surprising ways, physical and mental illness, addictions, excessive anger, you know the list. Now younger generations have seen the damage this created and responded with an openness to self-care, but it has quite possibly been more reactionary than healing. Often associated with Netflix binging and juice cleanses.

So, for most of us, our launch day event falls somewhere in between cheese and crackers with a small group of friends or simply pressing “go live” on our website…then sitting back and waiting for all the sales to come rolling in. We can do better. YOU can do better. In this session, you’ll discover the secrets to a great launch.

SESSION 5: CONGREGATIONAL READINESS

What we know from working with congregations and organizations of every shape and size, in every part of the country, is that innovation takes more than a “someone with an idea” or a “person with a plan.” Innovation is never a solo act. It requires an ecology of support before anything new can break away from the gravitational pull of “we’ve always done it that way.”

If we want our new idea to fly, we need need our congregation or organization to become ecologies of innovation—innovation cultures. In this session, we help you determine if your church or organization is ready for innovation and give you tips on how to develop an culture of innovation.

SESSION 6: WHAT MAKES A GOOD IDEA

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of missional innovators and church leaders to help them launch a new project or ministry. We’ve seen a LOT of ideas and have a pretty good concept of what makes a good idea.
In this session, we’ll talk through the biggest differences between ideas that are “good” and ideas that, well, aren’t. And we’ll talk through the process of moving an idea from concept to reality.

SESSION 7: HERDING CATS

You’ve probably heard it before. Actually, you’ve probably lived before: It’s not about the idea. It’s about the execution. We’ve all seen great missional ideas flounder, Not because it wasn’t a great idea. Not because the person with the idea wasn’t committed. Not because the person wasn’t willing to work hard. But because the person with the idea became so overwhelmed by the raging sea of details.

In order to launch your new project or missional idea, it’s important to focus on what’s most important amid the whirlwind of the details. This process is not complicated, but it IS hard. In this session, we’ll help you identify what’s most important and give you tools needed to stay focused and see your idea become become a reality.

YOUR TEACHERS

Kenda Creasy Dean comes to Ministry Incubators after 30 years of doing ministry that wasn’t in a job description. An ordained United Methodist minister, she teaches practical theology, youth ministry, education and formation, and social innovation at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she directs The Zoe Project, a Lilly Endowment initiative on congregational innovation with young adults. She has extensive experience in new ministry development, grant-writing, and nonprofit ministry, especially with young people.

Kenda is the author of several books including Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, The Godbearing Life (with Ron Foster), The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (with Andrew Root), A More Excellent Way: How Youth Ministry Can Change Theological Education, If We Let It (with Christy Lang Hearlson), and Under the Dragon Scales: Restoring Joy in Youth Ministry (with Wesley Ellis, Justin Forbes, and Abigail Visco Rusert), in press.

A graduate of Miami University (Ohio), Wesley Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary, Kenda served as a pastor in suburban Washington, DC and as a campus minister at the University of Maryland before coming to Princeton. She and her husband Kevin live in Princeton, NJ and have two grown children, Brendan and Shannon.

Carmelle Beaugelin is a visual artist and a “holy cheerleader” of ministry practitioners. Carmelle began to discern her call to ministry as a preteen at her mother’s small, but mighty, Pentecostal church in Miami where a strong belief in the “priesthood of all believers” allowed youth agency to flourish.

Carmelle received her Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2018, she joined the staff of the Institute for Youth Ministry at Princeton Seminary and serves as the Program Coordinator for the Log College Project, a youth ministry and innovation research grant project funded by the Lilly Endowment, which journeys alongside congregations as they design, test, and implement new forms of intergenerational youth ministry in their context. Some of her work has included serving as a ministry co-conspirator and board member for The Feed Truck Ministries Inc., as an Expert Innovator for The Center For Youth Ministry Training, and as the Artist-in-Residence at the 2018 Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry.

When she’s not conspiring with teenagers as to how to discreetly break into seminary chapels to hold impromptu worship services, she enjoys acrylic painting, Haitian cooking, and black Cuban coffee.

Trey Wince: As the Director of New Disciples for the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, Trey helps high impact churches and church leaders tap into their creative side.

During his years of church leading, planting, consulting, coaching, and pastoring, Trey has remained convinced that high impact churches are really just churches who know how to take care of the little stuff first.

He has served as pastor of Kingston UMC, College Director (serving students at Vanderbilt, Belmont, and Lipscomb Universities), Director of Young Adult Ministries at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville and international missions coordinator with Joshua Expeditions.

Trey is an International Coaching Federation (ICF)-trained coach through the Coach Approach Skills Training program.

Ministry Incubators co-founder Mark DeVries brings with him a career of entrepreneurial ministry and coaching. A serial entrepreneur, Mark has founded numerous sustainable ministry enterprises, most notably Ministry Architects, of which he’s also president. This team of over 50 consultants has worked with over 500 churches, bringing together centuries of expertise in youth ministry, children’s ministry, young adult ministry, small church ministry, executive coaching, and strategic initiatives for entire churches.

Mark is also co-founder of the Center for Youth Ministry Training, and the founder of Justice Industries. Mark served as the Associate Pastor for Youth and Their Families at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee for 28 years, where he continues to serve in a volunteer capacity.
Mark is the author of a dozen or so books, including Sustainable Youth Ministry, Family-Based Youth Ministry, and many more.

BUY NOW FOR $199

Questions? Contact us at john@ministryincubators.com