MINISTRY INCUBATORS
Mark DeVries
Mark DeVries brings to Ministry Incubators a career of entrepreneurial ministry and coaching. A serial entrepreneur, Mark has founded numerous sustainable ministry enterprises, most notably Ministry Architects (2002). This team of over 50 consultants has worked with over 500 churches, bringing together centuries of experties in youth ministry, children's ministry, young adult ministry, small church ministry, executive coaching, and strategic initiatives for entire churches.
Mark served as the Associate Pastor for Youth and Their Families at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee from 1986-2014. Mark’s work at First Presbyterian included a combination of volunteer and staff development, teaching and preaching, relational ministry with youth and their families, as well as regularly participating in the worship and mission life of the church.
Mark is a graduate of Baylor University and Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including Family-Based Youth Ministry, Sustainable Youth Ministry, The Most Important Year of a Man’s/Woman’s Life and The Indispensable Youth Pastor, which he co-authored with Jeff Dunn-Rankin.
Mark and his wife, Susan, live in Nashville and have three grown children (Adam, Debbie and Leigh), two granddaughters (Parish and Nealy), and a third grandchild on the way!
Kenda Creasy Dean
Kenda Creasy Dean comes to Ministry Incubators after 30 years of doing ministry that wasn't in the job description. She has extensive experience in new ministry development, grant-writing, and nonprofit ministry, especially with youth and young adults. She serves on the United Methodist Church's New Church Development Advisory Council and is part of the leadership team of Kingston United Methodist Church, a "teaching congregation" that supports young adults doing new ministry development. Kenda believes that every church is called to be a ministry incubator--a place where the community's most creative people can launch faithful ventures no one has thought of yet.
An ordained United Methodist pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference and Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, Kenda works closely with PTS's Institute for Youth Ministry. She has written widely on young people and the church, including Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (recipient of the Christianity Today’s 2011 Book Award and listed by Preaching Magazine as one of 2010’s Best Books for Preaching), The Godbearing Life (with Ron Foster), The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (with Andrew Root), and A More Excellent Way: How Youth Ministry Could Change Theological Education, If We Let It (with Christy Lang Hearlson).
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 for her Ph.D. She and her husband Kevin have two grown children, Brendan and Shannon, and one noisy cat. Kenda is slowly gaining an appreciation for "Dr. Who" and has been known to binge watch "Sherlock," "Downton Abbey," and "The Network" with her equally binge-prone spouse. They de-tox by digging their toes in the sand in Ocean Grove, NJ.
