Signpost: Praxis Labs (Andy Crouch) – Designing for a Different Future
CBMC Belfast has promoted what Praxis Labs are doing a number of times in the past three months and I know a lot of people have got value out of those articles.
Former Executive Director of Christianity Today, Andy Crouch is recognised as having an important voice in the Christian world as he seeks to provide perspectives on how Christians should engage with culture. He has authored a number of highly acclaimed books including Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling, Strong and Weak and The Tech-Wise Family to name a few of my favourites.
Three months into lockdown and with restrictions easing slowly it is now surely the job of a marketplace leader is to work out what to do next. The idea that we can’t just get back to normal has been widely expressed and so I imagine that if you have a decision-making role within your organisation you will be faced with thoughts on ‘how to blend flexible working with being in the office’ or ‘how is demand for my product/service shifted’ etc. etc. In this article and accompanying Podcast, Andy Crouch and Dave Blanchard bring some big ideas to the table including the opportunities there will be to create ‘redemptive business models’ that seek to bless people inside the organisation and renew the broader sector
Another powerful idea they discuss is challenging the norm of using predictive models to interpret how you should act. They discuss this idea in terms of ‘prediction’ versus ‘promise’ raising the interesting observation that the better the predictive model the greater the false sense of security it brings leaving the organisation even more exposed to the ‘black swan’ events or even to factors that the model does not adequately value.
The alternative to predicting is promising. This is a “…totally different way of relating to the future where are you actually commit yourself to something in the future that you acknowledge is unknowable and unpredictable but you bind yourself in a way to some good thing … and just say whatever comes this I will do my best to live this way”.
A really interesting take and if you are a Christian that enjoys wrestling with big ideas this Podcast and article, and basically anything produced by Praxis Labs is a good place to open up the conversation in your own mind, and even better, forward to a friend and discuss with them.