Nice thread..
T-Block has answered what I believe to be the major parts of the question.
if you actually scrutinise those universal progression starts & endings, you will realize that they are pary of the circle of 4ths...
I have many progressions in my notebook that I've made from the circle of 4ths.
The circle is 1-4-b7-b3-b6-b2-b5-7-3-6-2-5..
Another way of forming progressions is taking different chords & then trying to add chords in-between to link them together.
Another way I do it is by utilizing the Chromatic scale, can be up or down or a hybrid of both.
I've touched on this topic in a thread I can't seem to locate now
Anyway, those are other ways of doing it.
Another way I like is using the 6,3,4 & adding a 2 here & there..then U focus on various inversions on the RH..
I did a post on that here:
http://www.learngospelmusic.com/forums/index.php/topic,51440.msg504206/topicseen.html#msg504206Finally, you can have some basic progressions & add passing chords (I love this 1 because it uses numbers
..just read this document:
http://www.gospel-chords.com/samples/volume-0-86.pdfI look forward to playing your chord progressions