Through a free six-session video & discussion series, The Praxis Course aims to help innovative leaders and builders to develop an imagination for what we call "Redemptive Entrepreneurship," which means to leverage personal and organizational power for the sake of others, and to create products, services, and organizations that join God in the renewal of all things. Ask your leader to send your unique link to register for the Course.
At Praxis, we believe the future of culture depends largely on the worldview of the next generation of entrepreneurs, innovators, creators, and builders.
And that in this time of radical cultural and technological change, the Church’s witness depends largely on the praxis—the faith in action—of Christians.
So: as we put our own faith into action through our work, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity, what are we bringing to the task? How do we start things, build things, and create things in ways that love and serve our neighbors? Are our imaginations, practices, and values actually distinct from those around us? Does our identity in Christ actually change the way we imagine, serve, and lead?
The Praxis Course is designed to help you reflect on those questions. It’s organized around what we call the “Mindset of the Redemptive Leader.”
For comparison’s sake, the common mindset toward creative work could be summed up this way:
WE CREATE FROM STRENGTH, FOR PROGRESS, THROUGH HUSTLE, WITH OPTIMISM, IN STRIVING.
Every part of that mindset is a good thing! But taken together, that mindset is fundamentally about ourselves—our strength, our hustle, our optimism, our achievement.
The mindset of the redemptive leader, on the other hand, is altogether different:
WE CREATE FROM LOVE, FOR RESTORATION, THROUGH SACRIFICE, WITH HOPE, IN FREEDOM.
In order for your work to result in outcomes in the world that are restorative, truthful, and humanizing, we believe you must start with a redemptive mindset.
The Course begins with an invitation into God’s creative vocation (We Create) and ends with a commissioning and benediction to take redemptive action in the world (In Freedom). Check out each part of the mindset below.
Entrepreneurs and innovators are constantly creating. Praxis Partner for Theology Andy Crouch discusses our role in creating and cultivating in this world. For the last 100 years, Christians have taken four postures toward culture, reactive models of how Christians have historically responded to the world, that have proven to be unhelpful. The only way to change culture is to create more of it: to create something that carries new possibilities, horizons, and aspects of human existence that didn’t exist before in a given sector or issue.
Entrepreneurs’ energy arises from many sources: from a need to prove their worth, from a hunger to make their mark on the world, from anger over injustice, from greed for the prestige, power, or security that may come. Redemptive leaders are attuned to the ways they tend to rely on these counterfeit energies, choosing instead to cultivate love — the truest and most potent source of inspiration. Praxis Venture Partner and serial entrepreneur, Jessica Kim, shows us that love is the most powerful motive possible, and it can power everything we do as entrepreneurs. She walks us through how loving God and our neighbors can play out in the complexity of a startup.
Entrepreneurs create and lead ventures with a broad view of how the world should be, and how their venture seeks to contribute to that change. For many entrepreneurs, this vision is the inexorable upward progress of humanity through ingenuity. We believe that God will reconcile all things to himself and restore his reign on earth — yet our role is not to achieve this restoration but to practice it and point to it. Jon Tyson introduces the core idea of the gospel—creation, fall, redemption and restoration—and shows us how our calling as creators and fits deeply into the story of God’s work in the world. Jon presents us with a sobering challenge: rather than going out and think we are going to fix everything in arrogance, we must start by asking “What is the culture of my own heart?”
Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a sacrifice, we can walk in the way of love and give to others out of our abundance. We have unlimited opportunities for generosity through our work — absorbing slights and blame, distributing influence and credit, living and operating within limits, offering terms that are more than fair. Andy Crouch will show us that the gospel gives us the vision and resources to move beyond ethics, beyond excellence, beyond integrity—to a posture of sacrifice. Through every part of our venture, from our products and brands to our workforce practices and culture, we can commit to give up some of what we might claim so that others can flourish.
As entrepreneurs we feel the burden of the world’s problems and deeply believe in our ability to help solve them. This optimism — so essential to beginning the work of restoration — inevitably gives way to pessimism and even despair as we encounter more of the world’s brokenness and our own limitations. Yet we can give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because we know that our labor in him is not in vain. We can know the world at its most painful struggles and failures, yet choose to love it in hope. Praxis Partner, Jena Lee Nardella, shows us what it looks like to hope in the Lord and trust in his goodness, even when we encounter setbacks in our venture and leadership.
We know that if we define our identity primarily on our success of changing the world through our work, we are indeed slaves to that ambition, however noble. Yet we know that it is for freedom that God has set us free. In his grace, he has saved us not only from condemnation but for life. We are sent into the world to act, to risk, to fail and succeed, and to persist in our calling with joy and peace in the face of uncertainty. Fear and striving are nearly constant in the entrepreneurial journey. But entrepreneur and author, Dave Evans, commissions us to action by demonstrating that through his grace, God has given us permission to “try stuff” in the world with a spirit of freedom instead of fear.