all smoke and mirrors, church meetings, missional ?

How is your churchboard meetings? Is it stiffy smoke-filled meetings around an oak table with a multimedia display ? It it a group of middleaged to older men, in black suits and white ties ? Is it an informal gathering around the coffee table at the house of one of the members, or in the coffeeshop during a lunchbreak?

The kind of setting, the formation, the rituals that goes along with the gathering, say a lot about the context of the faith community, but also the style of ministry. The question is however whether it say something about the missional identity ?

It seems that missional identity is something deeper, then simply being a reflection of the context and the change of style. A missional identity evolves over time, in line with the community's sensitivity to what God is doing. Hence the local dynamocs will play in, but it will not merely be a reflection of the context, it will also engage the context, as God is engaging that context. This will eventually have implications for the style, but not merely as a mirror to the life-world of the followers of Jesus.