Book Review: Kate Coleman’s new book, Metamorph
Kate Coleman Metamorph – Transforming Your Life and Leadership: Inspired Wisdom from the Extraordinary, Ordinary People of the Bible (100 Movements Publishing, 2024) xxvi + 247pp, ISBN 978-1-955142-60-1 (print), 978-1-955142-61-8 (eBook), £14.99
Dr Kate Coleman spoke at the 2014 MODEM day conference in London and copies of the slides for her presentation are still available on our website:
She was exploring issues from her book 7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behaviour in Work and Ministry (2010). Since then, Kate has continued to teach and research into church leadership and this new volume is the fruit of that work, which is about the changing nature of leadership across organisations in general but more specifically in churches.
She argues leadership is a constantly evolving idea that not only means different things to different people, but has a variety of meanings depending upon social and geographic contexts. Coleman’s essential understanding of leadership is that all in an organisation should be empowered to make a difference. She writes: “the future of successful organisations will partly depend on their ability to recognize that leadership can live everywhere in the organization and that everyone should be encouraged to take ownership and exercise responsibility in the ways that make the best use of their abilities and passions” (p 10).
Coleman draws positively on her time as the only Black woman Baptist minister in the UK. Whilst that experience has clearly been formative, she also reflects on her subsequent work across a wider range of churches and organisations as well as reflecting on her extensive reading from different ecclesiologies and leadership systems. All this shapes her understanding of metamorphic leadership and the “metamorphs” who bring transformation about in churches.
However, she offers the caveat that although metamorphosis is a biblical idea, leadership is not explicitly found in scripture: “We come closer to biblical thinking when we regard leadership as a verb – as something we do, as in ‘leading’ – rather than something we are” (p 15). She goes on to note that in this process of transformative leadership a critical element is narrative and story: “Stories ask us to be involved in mystery, complexity, and ambiguity more than most other forms of communication. They are immersive and emotive, often leading to ‘aha’ moments that inspire change and kick-start the transformational process itself” (p 35). Coleman then proceeds to explore in depth six biblical stories to illustrate metamorphosis and what it is to be a metamorph.
The biblical narratives that she draws upon in her subsequent six chapters – as she examines the types of transformational change they illustrate – are:
1) Moses and the path to self-discovery;
2) The woman at the well and the art of becoming;
3) Mary and her cousin Elizabeth discovering the power of friendship;
4) The apostles (Acts 6) and the need for just leadership and radical empathy;
5) Esther and leading on purpose and asking good questions;
6) The 120 disciples (Acts 1–2) and embedding a disruptive, mission mindset;
As well as exploring these biblical narratives and applying them to contemporary leadership challenges in churches, each element of metamorphosis is also illustrated by a contemporary example of an individual’s change story. This helps to move the biblical accounts and Coleman’s analysis of them into a contemporary setting. In addition, each of these practical chapters has a series of helpful questions for personal reflection or group discussion.
She concludes by making a call for churches to engage in the kind of metamorphic disruption she identifies in Acts 2: “Wherever there is a contradiction between what the church teaches and what it does in practice, it experiences both an erosion of credibility and an inevitable decline in every era … Authentic faith in Jesus is always a call to transformation, not just information, education, or multiplication” (p 217).
The storyline of Coleman’s account of transformative leadership clearly emerges from her own autobiographical world in the evangelical sphere of the Church. Nevertheless, there is much to be learnt by those of us who inhabit different rooms in our “Father’s house” and it is encouraging to read an evangelical analysis about church leadership that is not predominantly focused on the metrics of growth.
Vaughan S Roberts
Chair of MODEM