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’.
