Director, Church Engagement

Praxis; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 155,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully paid health insurance for family

5% 401k matching

Flexible vacation policy

Travel expenses covered

Job summary

Praxis is hiring a Director of Church Engagement to lead its work with local churches and universities. This role focuses on serving pastors, removing friction, and helping churches utilize Praxis resources in a way that fits their community.

You will lead a growing team and shepherd churches through hosting the Praxis Course and forming redemptive practices. The role emphasizes service over selling, with remote flexibility for a highly experienced candidate.

Qualifications

• Love for local church and collaboration with pastors across traditions.
• Entrepreneurial builder capable of standing something up from the ground.
• Strong relationship-building with senior church leaders and teams.
• Able to turn learnings into scalable resources for churches.

Responsibilities

• Develop strategy for engaging local church leaders, networks and denominations.
• Build trusted relationships with senior pastors and church teams.
• Guide churches to host the Praxis Course and weave it into congregational life.
• Lead the Church Activation Toolkit development and continuous improvement.
• Oversee the Pastor Cohort and support broader Praxis design and events.

Skills

Local church experience

Pastor collaboration

Entrepreneurial mindset

Strategic leadership

Job description

Praxis began in 2011 with a desire to support and equip Christian entrepreneurs and has grown steadily into a 30+ person, NY-centric team advancing the redemptive imagination and action of founders, funders, and innovators motivated by their faith to address the major issues of our time. As a $15M+/year nonprofit with ambitious growth plans, we're expanding our venture-building work globally, organizing around the major issues of our time, and building media and more to activate the redemptive potential of Christians around the world. We see our team as the first carriers of the mission, building an organization that is great to work at, excellent in its craft, and redemptive in its finances as well as its programs.

The Role

Praxis is hiring a Director of Church Engagement to lead its work with local churches and universities. This person helps churches use the Praxis Course and related resources well, builds trusted friendships with senior pastors, and makes sure churches feel served and equipped rather than sold to. They lead a growing team and are responsible for whether churches move from first interest, to actively hosting, to a lasting habit of forming their people in the Redemptive Way. The posture is one of service to the church and its pastors, in the spirit of helping the church do what only the church can do.

This role exists to serve, equip, and enable the local church and its senior pastor. The Director of Church Engagement is the person who carries Praxis’s relationship with churches: understanding what pastors are trying to build, removing friction, and helping each church use Praxis resources in a way that fits its own community and calling. The aim is not to grow Praxis. The aim is to help churches activate people, and to help pastors lead congregations that practice generosity, courage, and care for their neighbors over the long haul.

While Praxis is known and respected amongst local church leadership, it is a newer entrant (with new offerings) to church-facing work, so unlike organizations with an established church presence, this role includes a healthy, servant-hearted invitation in the early years: helping churches discover the Course (and other formational experiences) and decide to host it. That invitation is always offered in the posture of service, never as a sales pitch.

What Success Looks Like

If this role is working, Praxis, through the Course and additional resources, is deployed as the vocational version of Alpha. We will see more people formed, through more churches, more often.

We will track our progress by asking a few simple questions:

• How many churches are actively engaged with Praxis resources?
• What share of each congregation is taking part?
• How often do churches run the Course again after their first time?
• How is the fruit and faithful action of those encountering Praxis ideas, stories and resources changing over time?

Leading indicators we will watch include:

• Churches where the senior pastor is personally engaged.
• Churches where a staff member owns the work day to day.
• The rate at which churches return to host again.
• Churches that clearly understand what Praxis offers and why.
• Stories and case studies that show formation taking root.

Key Areas of Responsibility

Church Engagement Strategy

• Develop the vision and strategy for how we will engage and reach local church leaders, networks and denominations. Igniting a global community activating redemptive potential of their local congregations.
• Approach the role with an entrepreneurial and innovative mindset. Develop creative approaches to strategy, engagement, community, reach and fellowship.

Pastor & Church Relationships

• Build and steward trusted relationships with senior pastors and church teams, helping them move from interest, to hosting, to building a lasting culture of redemptive formation.

Church Activation & Formation

• Help churches host the Praxis Course well, and guide them in weaving it into the rhythms of congregational life.
• Lead the development and ongoing improvement of the Church Activation Toolkit, gathering feedback from churches, naming the friction points, and turning what works into resources others can use.
• Cast vision and help run the Pastor Cohort, the program that walks deeply with a small number of pioneering senior pastors and churches each year.
• Contribute to Activate, our in development annual gathering for pastors, lay leaders, and culture-makers.
• Lead a growing church engagement team, including the Sr. Manager Praxis Course Product & Engagement and TBC roles pending growth

Who You Are

• You love the local church and have spent meaningful time inside it, ideally on staff as Senior Pastor or in close partnership with pastors.
• You are trusted by senior leaders, and you carry yourself with humility, warmth, and discretion.
• You can hold theological depth and practical excellence at the same time, and you are comfortable serving churches across a range of traditions.
• You are an entrepreneurial builder who is happy to do the early, unglamorous work of standing something up, and a leader who can grow a team as the work grows.
• You are organized, follow through, and turn what you learn into resources that help the next church.
• You share Praxis’s conviction that Christians are called to be redemptive culture-makers, and you want to help the church live that out.
• You practice what we preach. We have to be redemptive exemplars on our team, in how we work, and how we treat others in our community.

Location: New York City preferred. Remote will be considered for a highly experienced candidate.
Travel:

• Quarterly team meetings (typically held at Praxis HQ in New York City)
• Annual Praxis Summit
• Additional travel as needed for in-person Design Sprints, film and production meetings, and major events such as our Regional Gatherings and Activate
• All travel expenses covered by Praxis

Reports to: Managing Partner, Media, Brand and Product

• Range: $120K to $155K based on experience and location
• Comprehensive benefits including fully paid health insurance for families
• 5% matching 401k
• Flexible vacation policy

For all Praxis roles, we are open to candidates who are "outside of range." Growth-minded applicants at an earlier stage of career and compensation, and candidates with experience above the top of the range, are welcome and encouraged to apply.

Cultural AlignmentPraxis finds its theological identity most clearly stated in the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and the Cape Town Commitment (2010) . All Praxis staff and program participants are asked to affirm The Apostles’ Creed as a statement of their own beliefs. The ideal candidate will demonstrate alignment with the above, as well as our mission to advance redemptive entrepreneurship. We're seeking a leader who combines operational excellence with a spirit of humility and service, contributing to our vision of building an organization that embodies redemptive principles in all aspects of its work and culture, which includes shared rhythms such as daily team prayer and a company-wide weekly Sabbath, as detailed in our Rule of Life for Redemptive Entrepreneurs (rule.praxislabs.org).