The Baccalaureate speaker for Penn’s May 13 ceremony will be Andy Crouch, partner for theology and culture at Praxis, an organization that works as a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship. His two most recent books—The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place and Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing—build on the compelling vision of faith, culture and the image of God laid out in his previous books Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power and Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.

Penn’s Baccalaureate Ceremony is a 50-minute interfaith program that includes music, readings, prayers and a guest speaker. There will be two ceremonies in Irvine Auditorium to accommodate everyone who would like to attend. Students whose last names begin with A through K are invited to attend at 1:30 p.m.; students whose last names begin with L through Z are invited to attend at 3 p.m. Tickets and academic regalia are not required.

Mr. Crouch serves on the governing boards of Fuller Theological Seminary and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. For more than 10 years he was an editor and producer at Christianity Today, including serving as executive editor from 2012 to 2016. He served the John Templeton Foundation in 2017 as senior strategist for communication. His work and writing have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing—and, received a shout-out in Lecrae’s 2014 single “Non-Fiction.”

From 1998 to 2003, he was the editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly, a magazine for an emerging generation of culturally-creative Christians. For 10 years he was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard. He studied classics at Cornell and received an MDiv summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz and gospel, he has led musical worship for congregations from five to 20,000.