Abstract
In this article I read one inner city faith community – the Tshwane Leadership Foundation (TLF) – through the lenses of literature that reflects on chaordic organisations and chaordic leadership. I explore whether an emphasis on the management of diversity, which is widespread in organisational and ecclesial practices and languages, should not be replaced with a spirituality of vulnerable embrace, as I discover it in this specific faith community. It is a spirituality that combines an invitation and radical embrace of diversity, and a dance with chaos, with a posture of vulnerability and a vision of justice. I bring the reflections of community members in TLF on difference and diversity in their organisation, in conversation with scholars contemplating chaordic organisations and chaordic leadership. I then wonder whether their emphasis on embrace instead of management does not open up the possibility of retrieving and affirming the hidden beauties and potentialities mediated by diversity, which is, I suggest, to practise ‘chaordic beauty’.
Highlights
Description: This research is part of the research project, ‘Social Justice and Reconciliation’, which is directed by Dr Stephan de Beer, Director of the Centre for Contextual Ministry and member of the Department of Practical Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria
In this article I read one inner city faith community – the Tshwane Leadership Foundation (TLF) – through the lenses of literature that reflects on chaordic organisations and chaordic leadership
I bring the reflections of community members in TLF on difference and diversity in their organisation, in conversation with scholars contemplating chaordic organisations and chaordic leadership
Summary
Practising chaordic beauty: On embracing strangers in one inner city faith community. I explore whether an emphasis on the management of diversity, which is widespread in organisational and ecclesial practices and languages, should not be replaced with a spirituality of vulnerable embrace, as I discover it in this specific faith community. In this article I will reflect on the ways in which TLF (Tshwane Leadership Foundation 2016), as an intentional Christian faith community in the inner city of Pretoria, seeks to deal with diversity. In contrast, is a simple language, retrieving theological or spiritual categories, very much away from managerial, technocratic or bureaucratic jargon It is a language laden with images such as embrace, warm hospitality, welcome, inclusion, a table of abundance, humanity, image of God, loving our neighbour and one community. Started in 1993, it developed a range of responses and local base communities in solidarity with some of the city’s most vulnerable people
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