The Praxis Course: Strategic Invitation
The all-new Course is a vital part of our “creative engine” strategy.
Our work at Praxis centers on redemptive entrepreneurship — the work of joining God in creative restoration through loving sacrifice in the domains of venture building and innovation.
This has largely been the ethos and vision since the start of Praxis— from the way we support founders through our Business and Nonprofit accelerators, to the education and formation that takes place through our Annual Academy and Emerging Founders programs.
These programs and gatherings are where the culture of Praxis evolved and became habituated, as a community of fellows, mentors, investors, and thinkers began to form, all of whom were seeking the kingdom of God through the market strategy and operational practices of their ventures.
We’ve seen our closest community members latch on to the concepts and practices of redemptive entrepreneurship — not because the framework gives them new passion and direction, but because it clarifies and amplifies the trajectory they are already on.
This dynamic has been most applicable within the confines of the accelerator or Academy gatherings, rooms filled with high-capacity actors in the startup ecosystem.
Yet we’ve witnessed a fascinating follow-on effect. As our most active community members practice and discuss redemptive entrepreneurship, they stir interest and momentum among many others, whether or not they are an entrepreneur in the strictest sense. We’ve spoken with MBA students, freelance photographers, and software engineers who are convinced that their role in the workplace involves more than being an excellent, high-integrity Christian employee. They want their work to result in outcomes and impacts in the world that are culturally restorative and humanizing, whether their field is sports marketing, architecture, finance, or operating a retail storefront.
As a “creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship,” we want to help that momentum along.
The Praxis Course is a tangible, manageable, local invitation into that vision — and into this growing community of practice. It is designed to shape communities of leaders who put beliefs and ideas into action — the very definition of praxis.
The six-session Course allows local groups (within churches, within ventures, or among friends within broader communities) to gather and discuss some of the “greatest hits” talks from our accelerators and Academy programs. The Course begins with an invitation into God’s creative vocation and ends with a commissioning, a benediction to exhale what has been inhaled into the places and spaces we inhabit in the world. Each session is built to guide a leader seamlessly through the process of facilitating a conversation, through a mix of video content, discussion questions, and reflection activities.
At the end of the Course, leaders and participants are invited to find other touchpoints in the Praxis ecosystem, ranging from subscribing to the Praxis News and reading The Praxis Journal to applying for one of our accelerator or Academy programs.
For some, the concepts and practices outlined in the Course will give you a renewed imagination for a new venture within an explicitly entrepreneurial pathway. For others, the Course will offer renewed hope and vision for the daily work of the vocation you are currently pursuing.
Regardless of your situation, we are delighted to invite you into this conversation that has been evolving over the seven years since Praxis began, and to equip you to follow the call of God on your life in a faithful and redemptive way.
A final challenge: We invite you to think unconventionally and expansively about the spaces where The Praxis Course can allow you to lead. If you facilitate the Course in a small group at church, think about how it could become an engine for a new kind of discipleship or faith-work program there. If you facilitate the Course among your team, take the next step and have the team revisit your products, services, branding, projects, and operating principles through a redemptive lens. If you run a startup incubator, accelerator, or co-working space, investigate the possibility of using The Praxis Course “inside” the work you do with leaders.
Thank you for joining us on this journey and in this community of practice.
Explore the Course and register as a leader HERE, and check out the trailer below.
