Christian leadership is not optional, the church cannot be alternative

“Alternative leadership.” Alternative sounds modest. Almost spiritual. Even admirable. But in its ordinary meaning, alternative assumes a centre elsewhere. Something dominant, mainstream, accepted, and widespread already exists, and the alternative is permitted to stand beside it. It does not contest the centre; it survives on the margins. It waits to be chosen. It explains itself when ignored.

When the Christian imagination describes its leadership as alternative, it quietly admits a retreat it never publicly confessed. It agrees, often unconsciously, that the engines of society belong to others. It consents to coexistence rather than confrontation, to commentary rather than construction. It says, almost politely: If you want something different, we are here, but if not, we understand.

But how can the Creator’s order be an alternative? Alternative to what? To whom? Who displaced it? At what point did God’s vision for human flourishing become one option among many, rather than the original design against which all systems must be measured?

This is not a semantic dispute. It is a theological one, with direct consequences for how Christians understand their role in history.

It was against this background that a quiet yet decisive gathering of Christian business leaders and church leaders took place in Nairobi, for the first time in Africa, under the convening of Praxis, an international faith-driven investment and formation movement. Praxis is rooted in the conviction that the gospel speaks not only to souls, but to systems. It operates with the assumption that redemption extends beyond personal morality to institutions, markets, and cultural architectures; that the biblical story ends not with rescued individuals, but with the restoration of all things.

The gathering was not loud, but it was disruptive in the most constructive sense. It challenged the church’s habit of retreating into the language of “alternatives” and replaced it with a vision of redemptive presence — one that neither withdraws from the world nor mimics it, but seeks to transform it from within.

Praxis rejects the false choice between faithfulness and effectiveness. It insists that Christian leadership can be morally serious and economically viable, spiritually grounded and institutionally competent.

Entrepreneurship, investment, and leadership are treated not as neutral tools, but as moral acts capable of participating in God’s renewing work. Redemption here is not abstract; it is embodied, patient, and systemic.

This vision stands in sharp contrast to the church’s growing comfort with marginality.

The gospel did not enter history as an alternative lifestyle choice. It arrived as an announcement of reign. Jesus did not present Rome with another option; He declared a Kingdom that exposed the limits of Caesar’s authority. The early church survived not because it was harmless, but because it was serious, serious enough to reorder loyalties, unsettle unjust systems, and reimagine public life.

Yet over time, the church developed an alternative syndrome, a mindset that pacifies the church with moral correctness while excusing it from historical responsibility.

Once this syndrome takes hold, the church’s relationship to the nation becomes hesitant and conditional. It invests heavily in internal life while remaining cautiously concerned about public systems. It no longer dares to ask: What if the future of this country depended on the church? Instead, it behaves like one more interest group, available when invited, silent when inconvenient, and easily sidelined when power grows impatient.

This is a tragic misreading. In biblical terms, redemption is never merely rescue from sin; it is restoration to purpose. It is God reclaiming what has been corrupted. If redemption stops at individual piety and never reaches the systems shaping daily life, then the church has truncated its own gospel.

The alternative mindset slowly trains the church to cede ground it was meant to redeem. It relinquishes politics, economics, and cultural formation to forces that do not share its moral vision, and then condemns outcomes it refused to shape upstream.

This retreat is painfully visible among sections of the clergy. Too often, congregations must prod their leaders into public speech. Why are you silent? The people ask, after violence has erupted, after corruption has entrenched itself. Statements then emerge, carefully worded and belated, offering moral commentary long after moral leverage has passed. Silence here is not merely personal failure; it is theological confusion. It is the fruit of a church that no longer understands itself as a redemptive agent within history, but as a spiritual refuge from it.

This confusion also explains why politicians speak recklessly in sanctuaries. They sense the ambiguity. They recognise that many custodians of sacred space now operate with a convertible conscience, believing the church can host contradictions without consequence, accommodate both pulpit and podium, and still call itself faithful. Such flexibility rests on the same assumption: we are only an alternative. And alternatives, by definition, do not set the terms. They adjust to them.

The church must therefore lay aside alternative reasoning and take up redemptive responsibility. This shift alone can drain lethargy from the church’s pulse. It restores a long-forgotten posture, captured by the old hymn writer’s resolve: “Where duty calls or danger be, never wanting there.” That line names a readiness to appear precisely where history becomes costly.

It is here that Praxis’s presence becomes timely. Its work elsewhere shows that faith-rooted imagination, paired with disciplined formation and patient capital, can recover the church’s confidence in shaping public life.

The church is now summoned beyond personal piety to the redemptive reordering of systems, so that institutions, economies, and cultures may serve the fullness of life.

Here, the language of “alternative leadership” collapses. Leadership shaped by Christ is not a side note; it is a redemptive standard.