Certificate of Wisdom-Based Leadership

Pacific School of Religion

Group-Based Medium Level Wisdom-Based Leadership

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About This Course

Wisdom-Based Leadership is a professional formation learning path developed for PSR Collective, the continuing education platform of Pacific School of Religion. The three video courses — Courageous Collaboration, Contemplative Care, and Creative Communication — were created to address the three most common failure modes in faith-based and mission-driven leadership: shallow individualism, toxic hustle, and trendy regurgitation.

Each course integrates biblical and theological reflection, wisdom from diverse spiritual and cultural traditions, case studies, and the development of personalized leadership tools. The learning path is taught by Jonathon Murillo, who also serves as the facilitator of the live cohort sessions, creating continuity between the video content and the live community experience.

Wisdom-Based Leadership is not a course about leadership theory. It is a formation arc — designed to shape character and soul alongside competency and skill. Learners will leave not only with new frameworks, but with a deepened sense of who they are as leaders and what they are called to build.

What You'll Learn

• The concept and practice of Wisdom-Based Leadership — integrating spiritual formation with leadership skill
• The three core failure modes of conventional leadership — shallow individualism, toxic hustle, and trendy regurgitation — and how to move beyond each
• The practices of Courageous Collaboration: Encouragement, Empowerment, and Embodiment — and how to apply them in real team contexts
• Contemplative habits grounded in Simplicity, Solitude, and Solidarity that sustain leadership for the long haul
• Creative Communication practices — Reframing, Refocusing, and Renewing — that foster clarity, trust, and genuine creativity within teams
• How to build a personal leadership formation practice that integrates wisdom, contemplation, and creative expression
• Practical tools for team values development, collaborative decision-making, role and resource reimagination, and mission-aligned metrics and meetings
• The Formation and Skill Matrix — a framework for understanding where your leadership currently lives and where it is growing

Course Components

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📋 20 Lessons

📚 0 Resources

✍️ 0 Quizzes

📖 1 Assignments

How to Engage with this course

This learning path is structured as a semisynchronous cohort experience. Here is how it works: learners move through three video-based courses on their own schedule within the Kwaray platform — there is no fixed weekly schedule and no requirement to complete everything before moving to the next session. Alongside the async course content, each learner participates in four live, facilitated cohort sessions over a twelve-week arc, held via Zoom. These sessions are not additional lectures — they are structured spaces for community, peer application, coaching, and commissioning.

Cohort sessions are led by Jonathon Murillo, a strategist, facilitator, and formation leader with a Master of Divinity from Azusa Pacific Seminary. Jonathon is not the instructor of the video courses — each track has its own subject matter expert leading the curriculum. Jonathon's role is to hold the live session space: facilitating connection among learners, guiding peer application of the course content, and leading the formation coaching process. Subject matter experts from each track may be invited to join the Content Breakout session as guest contributors.

Learners in the cohort will be joined by peers from all three PSR Collective learning tracks — Wisdom-Based Leadership, Design Thinking for Social Change, and Contemplative Activism. While the video course content is track-specific, the four live sessions are shared across tracks. This creates an intentionally diverse learning community of spiritually rooted change leaders pursuing different but complementary work.

Between sessions, the Kwaray platform hosts cohort forums where prompts are posted after each live session. Learners are invited — not required — to engage these forums as a way of processing and staying connected between sessions.

Upon completing the assigned coursework and participating in the cohort arc, learners are automatically issued a PSR Collective Professional Certificate for their learning track. The certificate is awarded through the platform upon completion — no separate application required.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the Wisdom-Based Leadership learning path, learners will be able to:

• Comprehend wisdom, courage, contemplation, and creativity from diverse spiritual and cultural traditions and apply them to personal leadership contexts
• Identify and name the three core leadership failure modes — shallow individualism, toxic hustle, and trendy regurgitation — as they appear in their own leadership practice
• Practice the core disciplines of Encouragement, Empowerment, and Embodiment in day-to-day leadership and team engagement
• Cultivate contemplative habits grounded in Simplicity, Solitude, and Solidarity to sustain mission and prevent burnout
• Apply the practices of Reframing, Refocusing, and Renewing to develop authentic, trust-building communication within their teams
• Use the Name the Tension / Hold the Tension framework to navigate complex leadership challenges with courage and collaboration
• Develop and apply personalized leadership tools for team values formation, decision-making, meeting design, and metric development
• Articulate a personal leadership formation practice that integrates all three competencies of the Wisdom-Based Leadership framework

Your Instructor

Jonathon Murillo

Director of PSR Collective

Jonathon has served startups, universities, non-profits and faith communities as a strategist, facilitator, and creator. He is passionate about leadership formation and innovation resourced by theological imagination and leveraged for the flourishing of all. He received a Master of Divinity from Azusa Pacific Seminary and holds a B.A. in Communication from Vanguard University.

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