Embodied leadership: Paradigm shifts in the leadership of a local URCSA congregation

Abstract

In South Africa the religious sector, through its leadership, has in the past and can sill make a signiicant contribuion to the transformaion agenda, paricularly by fostering leadership relaionships across ethnic, cultural and socio-economic divides (bridging and linking social capital). Ethnographic empirical research into the leadership narraives of the Vlotenburg Uniing Reformed Church in Southern Africa, Stellenbosch, showed how the leadership in this congregaion moved through diferent leadership paradigms in a relaively short ime. An invesigaion using diferent theoreical frames was undertaken in an atempt to understand the impact that socio-cultural changes had on the funcioning of the leadership in the congregaion. The research also invesigated the transformaive inluence the leadership had on the embodied ecclesiology of this congregaion in a lowincome socio-economic environment. Some suggesions are made on how the local leadership can cross cultural and socio-economic divides and contribute to South Africa's transformaion agenda.

The pedagogical role of multicultural leadership in post-apartheid South Africa

“…globally in all sectors of society (Gibbs 2005;Nell 2011;Roxburgh 2005). This new emphasis on leadership can be attributed to disillusionment with capitalist markets, hierarchy and enclave ideologies (Crossman 2010:597).…”