In recent years, a sense of community has declined throughout the
United States. This trend is especially evident among younger
generations, whether measured by civic participation, political
involvement, or religious affiliation. Central Community Church an
intercultural congregation located in Tampa Bay s urban corridor
has responded to this trend by promoting community as an
organizational metaphor. An organizational emphasis on community,
however, still does not answer the question of what community is or
how it is constituted through the communicative processes and
practices of an intercultural congregation. For that reason, this
book explores particular ways in which that metaphor was
co-constructed by Central Community s racially/ethnically diverse
leaders and members, as well as limitations and tensions that
emerged from those efforts. In Part One, I begin by surveying the
three prevailing views of community: community as physical space,
community as disembodied concept, and community as communicative
process. I continue by positioning this study within relevant
literature on the social construction of race, the sensemaking
process, organizational metaphor, metaphoric understanding,
tension-centered approach, and dialectical theory. In Part Two, I
build upon four years of ethnographic fieldwork in order to outline
this study s context and qualitative research methods: participant
observations, semi-structured interviews, photography-driven
interviews, and World Cafe. In Part Three, I discuss (a) specific
ways in which community was understood by the racially/ethnically
diverse leaders and members of Central Community Church, (b)
unintended consequences that emerged from the metaphor of
community, and (c) ways in which dialectical tensions were managed
in order to maintain this metaphor. I then introduce an original
theoretical concept called the diversity paradox: an emphasis
placed upon one potential understanding of diversity which,
paradoxically, limits opportunities for alternative expressions of
difference. I conclude with three practical implications, as well
as potential directions for future research.
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