Incubators
As the name suggests, the Incubator is a safe place designed to foster growth and spiritual maturity.  These “goal-directed small groups” act as environments where no more than 12 people meet on a regular basis (typically meeting twice a month for one year) to grow spiritually, learn and transform their leadership abilities, and ultimately see their organizations transform the communities around them.  Groups usually include leaders of parallel position (e.g., pastors of their own local congregations or supervisors/mentors of groups of churches), so that the “deliverables” coming from this work are also parallel (e.g., a Ministry Action Plan for each congregation or regional association). The model is designed to be reproducible by the participants and ideally will help the Church realize God’s intended design. Many incubators can exist at one time and multiple churches or ministries can participate in an Incubator at one time. 

Core Values for Incubators
Some underlying values guide our work regardless of what our final contract looks like.  SLI is dedicated to seeing these values lived out through our work.
- All participating leaders must leave the historical “solo leader” role behind forever, finding a process that begins and sustains a deep sense of biblical community.
- All participating leaders are held accountable to growing one step at a time in their Spiritual journey
- All participating leaders have the opportunity to learn and practice the tools of leading a multi-team organization
- All ministry organizations participating in the Incubator Project have a process to categorize the key issues surrounding planning, implementing, and maintaining a healthy    environment where fruitful results are realized
- The participants retain a transferable model or process that can be used to facilitate and resource an accountable environment
- That some day the terms “Laity” and “Clergy” will be dropped from the vocabulary to be replaced by “ministry leaders” or some term that builds on the importance of    individual gifts and the development of Spiritual Leadership.

Incubator Scenario: What Participants Do
In loving support they hold each other accountable for spiritual growth, personal piety, and leadership development. They give themselves to God in worship, prayer and conversation. They learn together about community, following, and leadership. They become a leadership team that tackles a problem together so as to better create a disciple-making faith community.

Spiritual leaders are nurtured and developed by following three phases of instruction called L3 .
- L1 stands for Loving God and Neighbor. This involves accountability, sharing and worship.
- L2 stands for Learning in community. Lectures, videos, discussions, and exercises are used to help us discover personal gifts and abilities, investigate the current reality of our context, and reveal God’s direction for the future of our congregations.
- L3 stands for Leading together. We lead by forming our own teams as well as designing and implementing a Ministry Action Plan.

6 to 12 participants commit to meet 8 hours a month for a year. Participants decide further details of the commitment as a group. The key to success is the willingness of participants to make this a high priority for this season of their lives.

For information on SLI services, contact Margie Groves (859)967-8986