In part one of this topic, I talked about how the church has reversed its model on the core mandate which is to reconcile the hearts of men back to God. Instead of equipping the saints and sending them out, we have been pulling the fire inward, ordaining it, containing it, and calling that faithfulness. The result is a body of Christ that is present on Sunday and largely absent everywhere else. Do not get me wrong, raising pastors, teachers, evangelists etc is still vital to the process because we have to keep the cycle of equipping saints for ministerial work, and this is done by these people with such gifts.
But absence has consequences. And the consequences are showing up everywhere.
The Spheres We Have Left Behind
When the church steps back from the world, the world does not pause and wait. It keeps moving. And the spaces we were meant to occupy get filled by people who do not carry what we carry, Light.
Politics, Business, Education, Healthcare, Technology, Leadership. These are not secular spaces that have nothing to do with God. These are the very arenas where the values of the Kingdom are most desperately needed and most visibly absent.
I want to talk about two of these specifically because they are the ones I am most passionate about. Leadership and Technology.
Leadership: The Fire We Left in the Wrong Hands
I am burdened by the state of leadership in my homeland. Not just disappointed. Genuinely burdened.
We have watched, for years, as leadership positions have been handed over to people who do not fear God. And because they do not fear God, they do not fear the consequences of their decisions. They make choices that hurt people, endanger lives, and destroy futures without losing a single night of sleep over it.
Think about it. A person who wants to contest a serious political position in Ghana today needs at least a million cedis just to campaign. A million cedis, like “tete sika” 10 billion😂. That means the people leading us, or wanting to lead are not poor. They came into office with resources. So why, the moment they get in, does the looting begin? Why do funds meant for roads, hospitals, and schools disappear into private accounts while the people those projects were meant to serve suffer and sometimes die waiting?
The answer is not poverty. The answer is the spirit of mammon. These are people who are ruled by a love for money so deep that even having it in abundance does not satisfy them. They will do anything for more, even if it means putting the next person’s life on the line, that is how mammonic spirits operate. Even if it means a family loses someone because a hospital was not built, a road was not fixed, or a project was abandoned halfway.
This is what ungodly leadership looks like. And this is what we get when the church decides that politics is too dirty for people of faith.
But here is what I keep thinking. What if we had people in those offices who carried fire? What if the person signing off on that budget was someone who understood that they will stand before God and give account for every cedi that passed through their hands? What if our assemblies, our ministries, our parliament were filled with people who governed not for personal gain but because they genuinely believed they were stewarding something that belonged to God?
The fear of God changes how you lead. It changes what you are willing to do and what you absolutely will not do regardless of the pressure. A leader who fears God does not loot a hospital fund because they know that the mother who lost her child because of that missing equipment is seen by the same God they answer to.
The church needs to deliberately identify, train, and nurture people for these positions. Not as a power grab. Not to turn Ghana into a theocracy. But because Matthew 5:14 does not have an asterisk that says except in government. We are the light of the world. That includes the offices, the boardrooms, and the parliament buildings.
If we do not send fire there, someone else will fill those seats. And they already have.
Technology: The Most Powerful Tool of Our Generation
If leadership is the arena I am burdened by, technology is the one I am most fascinated by. And the more I work in it, the more convinced I am that the church cannot afford to sleep on this one.
Technology is not neutral. The people who build it shape it. The values of the people writing the code, designing the systems, and making the decisions end up embedded in the tools that billions of people use every day. An algorithm is not just math. It reflects the priorities of the person who built it. A platform is not just infrastructure. It amplifies whatever its creators decided to amplify.
Right now, the most powerful technological tools on the planet, artificial intelligence, social media platforms, surveillance systems, financial technology, biotechnology, are largely being built and controlled by people who have no framework for asking whether something should be done just because it can be done. And the results are already showing up.
We have AI systems that can generate convincing misinformation at scale. We have platforms that have been shown to deliberately push content that makes young people feel worthless because engagement drives revenue. We have technology being used to manipulate elections, surveil citizens, and concentrate wealth in ways the world has never seen before.
This is what happens when the most potent tool of a generation does not get into the hands of people who carry something beyond ambition and profit.
I believe God cares about technology. I believe he always raises people for the moment the world is in. And I believe there are young people sitting in churches right now who have the mind, the curiosity, and the calling to be in these spaces. To be the engineers who ask the ethical questions. To be the founders who build companies where people are not exploited. To be the researchers who think about what AI should and should not be allowed to do. To be the voices in the room when decisions are being made that will affect millions of people.
But those people need to be sent. They need to be told that their calling is not less holy because it involves a laptop instead of a pulpit. They need to be discipled not just in scripture but in their specific sphere. They need a church that says we are equipping you for the world you are actually going to live in, not just the one we are comfortable talking about on Sunday.
The Imprint We Leave Behind
Here is what both of these spheres have in common. The people in them leave imprints.
A leader who governs without the fear of God leaves an imprint of corruption, entitlement, and impunity that the next generation inherits and often repeats. A technologist who builds without values leaves an imprint in the systems and platforms that shape how millions of people think, feel, and relate to each other.
Imprints outlast the people who made them. The decisions made in offices today will shape the country my children grow up in. The technology being built right now will be the infrastructure of the next generation’s world.
That is why this matters. That is why the church cannot keep gathering fire and containing it within four walls. The world is being shaped right now, in boardrooms, in government offices, in technology companies, in classrooms, and the question is not whether it will be shaped. The question is by whom.
We were told to be the light of the world. Not the light of the sanctuary. The world.
So who will go? Who will carry the fire into the legislature, into the tech company, into the classroom, into the operating room, into the ministry of finance? When policy makers meet to make decisions, who will be representing God’s agenda in that meeting room?
Because if we do not send them, someone else will fill those seats. And they already have.
If the pepper decides to stay on the farm, do not be surprised when the soup has no taste.”…Labadi Proverb