Abstract

DE BEER, Stephan. Practising chaordic beauty: On embracing strangers in one inner city faith community. Herv. teol. stud. [online]. 2016, vol.72, n.1, pp.1-10. ISSN 2072-8050.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i1.3523.

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'.

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