Tony Boes

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5 Ways a Church Becomes a Machine

June 5, 2014 by Tony Leave a Comment

machine

Shallow, Impersonal, Uncaring

My church cares too much about how many people show up on Sunday. The pastors ask us to give money for their special projects, but don’t care to get to know us. Look at the volunteers, they’re automatons with fake smiles rushing around so that the church can churn out another rockin’ worship song,  another shallow sermon, and another waste-of-time youth event. We do more and more and more, but we’re all still dead inside.

I hear these kinds of complaints a lot. I read one on Facebook in a post by a depressed college buddy. I hear another grumbled from a family member over the holidays. I hear the same whispered, through tears, by a friend at a small-group meeting. Sometimes, when I am feeling cynical about failures in ministry, these are my own words–though they are rarely said aloud.

Some churches are blasphemous, personality-driven machines–top-heavy organizations that grind through people in the name of building even larger organizations that grind through even larger amounts of people. Such churches leave battered and broken people in their wake. They deserve the scorn they generate. With other churches, things are not quite so clear-cut.

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I’m 30, and My Room is Still a Mess

June 2, 2014 by Tony 2 Comments

birthday

My son’s room is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Toppled block buildings and crayon-wrapper debris lay atop overturned die-cast cars and plastic little-people corpses. Blankets have tumbled to the floor like a California mud-slide. I don’t want to think about the refugees hastily rushed under the bed.

I’ve seen this before, in my own room, years ago. I can still hear my mom hollering at me to clean up my act. I can remember those times when she would look at me, exasperated, and say: “Someday, you’ll be grown up. You’re going to have a kid, and you’ll understand.”

Mom didn’t live long enough to see my kids, or to hear me apologize to her for all the grief I put her through. But she was right. I’m all grown up, and I’m beginning to understand.

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About

Tony serves Missouri Baptists as webmaster, and is a part of a Karis Church planting team in Jefferson City, MO. He is blessed daily by his wife, Brianna, and two children. Read More…

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