Mission Houston Newsletter

"Personal Transformation is Required", by Jim Herrington, Founder of Mission Houston

On September 13, Mission Houston joined seven other city-wide ministries in hosting Dr. Bill Hull, pastor and author with a prophetic message on personal transformation for the church. The purpose of the day was to convene leaders from across the city to engage in a dialogue about personal transformation and its connection to the transformation of the city. (Please see pictures from the Bill Hull event below)

During the day, I was reminded of a conversation from ten years ago. My friend and I were sitting on a front porch swing, and he was complaining about the state of things in our city. I said, “You know what you could do.” Before I could say anything else, he said, “Don’t misunderstand me Jim. I’m not willing to change in order for things to get better. I just think that somebody should.” The challenge is that things are not going to change in our culture until we are changed. Personal transformation is required.

Bob is a retired business executive who has purchased a mobile home park in the Tomball area. The mobile homes are occupied by first generation Hispanic immigrants. Bob is using his time, money, and influence to advance the Kingdom of God in that small plot of geography. Jerry is the Senior Counsel for a publicly traded maritime transportation company who is mobilizing about 120 believers in his work place to function as the Body of Christ throughout the day. Jerry is integrating faith and work into one coherent whole. Josh and Aimee are a young adult couple with two preschool-aged daughters. They have invited five men who are in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse to live with them in order to learn the ways of Jesus. They have established a little outpost of the Kingdom of God in their neighborhood. All four of these individuals are living a missional life – and to get there, they have gone through (and would probably say continue to go through) the Refiner's Fire of personal transformation.

For many believers, when the term personal transformation is used, we hear a call to be better people – being more morale, attending church with more consistency, knowing more about the Bible, being more faithful in the practice of our quiet time. As important as those things might be, they are a means to a much larger end – an end that I believe is mostly lost among Christians in western culture today.

When those of us associated with Mission Houston speak of personal transformation we are issuing a call to believers to live a more missional life. A missional life is one in which family and faith and work and faith are more deeply integrated into one coherent whole. That’s what Bob and Jerry and Josh and Aimee are doing. For them faith and life are one whole. For many believers faith is practiced at church and through church activities. Family and work are a separate or compartmentalized place. In those compartmentalized places, believers try to be good, morale people…they try to let their light shine...but they don't see those places as their life mission.

Few of us have fully integrated our faith into our life. It is Mission Houston’s belief that there is a strong correlation between people living a missional life – one where faith and life are fully integrated – and the transformation of the city. So, we spend a good deal of our time fostering experiences that call us all to personal transformation that results in missional living.

The conversations that Bill Hull’s presentation stimulated are ongoing. We continue to believe this. If our city is going to be transformed, our congregations must be transformed. And if our congregations are going to be transformed, we must be transformed. Personal transformation is required.