'A call to embrace transformation'

Kate Coleman introduces her new book Metamorph: Transforming Your Life and Leadership - Inspired Wisdom from the Extraordinary, Ordinary People of the Bible

“Years ago, I stumbled across a story about someone who wanted to change the world. They invested considerable effort but couldn’t seem to achieve anything significant. They shifted their focus to their country, thinking they should start there, but again, they saw very little progress.

"Subsequently, they turned their attention to their city and even their neighborhood, yet success eluded them at every turn. Then they thought they could at least change their family, but that endeavor also fell short.

"Frustrated, they decided to focus on changing themselves. What happened next was entirely unexpected.

"As they transformed, their family followed suit. Their changed family influenced the neighborhood, which in turn impacted the city. The changed city affected their country and ultimately led to a transformation that rippled across the entire world.”

As retold in Metamorph: Transforming Your Life and Leadership Inspired Wisdom from the Extraordinary, Ordinary People of the Bible by Kate Coleman.


In recent years, the global Church, including in the UK, has experienced a significant loss of credibility, much of which can be attributed to issues of leadership. While the increasing complexity of the leadership landscape has undoubtedly played a role, the deeper problem lies in the methods traditionally adopted to identify, select, and develop leaders. Equally troubling are the values we’ve prioritised and the ways we’ve chosen to define leadership success.

Thankfully throughout history, there has never been just one story of the Church or of Church leadership. In every era, alongside narratives of compromise, injustice, power abuse, oppressive systems, deification of celebrity, fear, immorality, or faithlessness, there have also been alternative stories—“minority reports,” if you like—of courage, justice, humility, and faithfulness, stories characterised by personal as well as systemic transformation.

Some of the greatest Church movements and social reforms have emerged during such times.

Metamorph is my shorthand for leaders who understand that the transformation we so desperately need in our communities, churches, workplaces, and the wider world can only come through our own inner and outer transformation.

A Metamorph—whether an individual, organisation, or community—recognises that leadership is rooted in the proactive pursuit of personal transformation, not merely in outward acts of change.

The term Metamorph is derived from a word found in various forms across the New Testament, and an idea that is pervasive throughout the Bible. Many Christians are familiar with the word Metanoia, often translated as repentance. It conveys the profound ability to radically change our minds, orientation, and understanding.

In leadership, metanoia is critical because we must remain open to new ways of thinking and perceiving the world if we are to progress God’s purposes in and through our lives.

However, Christians are less familiar with another Greek word in our Christian ‘Metaverse’—Metamorphosis—which is all about transformation. Most people think of caterpillars turning into butterflies when they hear the word metamorphosis.

The concept is similar for us: we are also called to become something fundamentally different in both our interior lives (Metanoia) and our external practices and behaviours (Metamorphosis).

These two—metanoia and metamorphosis—are inseparable. Yet, we often reduce metanoia to a mere change of opinion and then wonder why true metamorphosis doesn’t follow, even within Christian circles.
 

About Metamorph: The Book

Part One: Introducing Metamorphosis explores the challenges of 21st-century leadership and leaders—where we are, how we arrived here, and where we need to go as leaders and within leadership itself. This section illuminates the concept of the Christian “Metaverse,” and the critical importance of taking metamorphosis (transformation) as seriously as we claim to take metanoia (repentance).

It lays the foundation for understanding how personal and systemic transformation are intertwined and essential in today’s leadership landscape.


Part Two: Transforming Identity focuses on practices that help us become the kind of leader God intends us to be from the inside out. Although every chapter speaks to self-leadership, this chapter particularly focuses on this.

We learn about the critical practice of nurturing curiosity from the inside out from the story of Moses which charts a godly path to self-discovery. We also journey with the Samaritan Woman from John chapter 4 in the process of becoming. Both she and Jesus’ disciples challenge us to identify and defeat self-limiting mindsets that keep us from affirming the potential in ourselves and others and that keep us captive to our own leadership blind spots.


Part Three: Transforming Community provides a framework for systemically transforming teams and organisational structures to build healthier communities.

Drawing from the story and friendship of Mary and Elizabeth, we learn how to leverage the power of friendships across difference. This includes cultivating "full disclosure" relationships in leadership that enhance the influence and depth of our necessary friendships… and perhaps enable us to make a few more.

The story of the apostles appointing “the seven” equips us to embrace radical empathy and radical solidarity to confront systemic strongholds—particularly those tied to race and inequality—while promoting Just Leadership to dismantle barriers to community flourishing.


Part Four: Transforming Mission equips us to discern our “whys.” We take a deep dive into Esther’s story and explore the four pivotal questions that reveal our core purpose: Why me? Why this? Why here? Why now?

These questions help us align our leadership activities with the things that matter most in all God has called us to, so we can always lead on purpose.

This section concludes with a focus on what it takes to embed a strategic mission mindset in an era that is both chaotic and heavily disrupted.

We learn from the example of the early 120 believers as they wait in the upper room and discover that sometimes the best response to chaos and uncertainty is to advance God’s purposes through an intentional commitment to “multiply disrupted disruptors” whose mindset allows them to adapt and thrive in the midst of change.


Metamorph aims to equip a new generation of leaders—leaders who are diverse, bold, and seldom "the usual suspects", in a desire to amplify the alternative story of leadership.

It is a call to embrace transformation, not just for ourselves but also for the communities, churches, workplaces, and wider world we are called to lead.
 

Metamorph - Transforming Your Life and Leadership by Kate Coleman is available to buy in the Baptists Together online shop 

Kate Coleman is the founder and co-director of Next Leadership, which has a mission 'to transform leadership by equipping leaders to serve well in today and tomorrow's world.' 

She was the first black woman Baptist minister in the UK and President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain in 2006-7

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