My second job as a teenager was bagging groceries at a Publix Super Market. $4.25 an hour, plus tips. Frankly, it was the “plus tips” that I worked for. On some sunny Saturdays in Oakland Park, Florida, I would walk away with a pocket full of $1 bills and feel pretty good about my six-hour shift. It was an easy enough gig. Not rocket science for sure, but I did have to figure out how to keep the kumquats from getting crushed by the 2% milk. Other than that, it was mostly customer service. I’d smile and make small talk with people checking out. I’d follow them out to their cars, unload their groceries into their trunks, and then just sort of stand there. Awkwardly. Hands in my pockets, waiting for what was due me.

I was shameless.

I wanted my tip! Of course, a tip wasn’t required, but it was sort of expected. By walking into my workplace, they were entering into a non-verbal contract with me. It clearly stated: I take out your groceries, then you give me a dollar.

If you don’t give me a dollar, I will cut you.

I didn’t say that, of course. But I did think it a few times when I got stiffed during the Thanksgiving holiday. Come on people! I provide a service and you pay for it.

This exchange of goods and services for payment is part and parcel with our American economy. We are happy to pay for something as long as we receive what has been advertised.  And if we do not receive what was advertised, we take our business elsewhere. That is the backbone of free trade.

But it should not be this way in the church. We aren’t purveyor of goods and services. Or are we? Churches compete for customers; pastors become marketers; sermons and songs are only jingles to move people along to the next aisle. Vendors of spiritual goods and services we have become—peddlers for profit. We, the pastors, willingly compete with the dozens of other spiritual grocery stores on the block, seeking our personal market share. We hang our posters and promote our brand, promising fewer gospel calories while guaranteeing more spiritual growth.

It’s a racket and we know it.

And it sells.

The marketing gurus were right. We were happy to lay down Karl Barth and pick up Jim Collins. These tried and true strategies fill up the gospel super-centers and even the mom and pop stores. People are coming, we shout! This stuff works! Hundreds and thousands sit in rows buying what we are selling.

But our pockets are lined with $1 lies.

This ecclesiological train wreck is training a generation of Jesus people to see the church as a wholesaler of spiritual truth. A few will come to squeeze the fruit, walk the aisles and see how friendly our sales people are. But in the end, many will leave for a double coupon day at the church down the street. And pastors are left feeling morose and regretful over their calling—vaguely remembering the desire to see people drawn into the ocean of grace.

What are pastors and churches to do?

I’m certainly no expert here. Though I am a pastor. And it’s worth noting, I value good marketing. I also love Jesus and I want people to feel radically welcome in our gatherings. But at some point, we cross the line into something that is not congruent with Jesus’ call to be the church. I don’t have a list of things to do or stop doing. If it were that easy, I would have written a list. But I do have to remind myself every weekend: I am not a vendor of goods and services. I am not here to get a tip of affirmation. I am a lover or people and a lover of God. Period. And worship songs are not killer playlists. They are songs about the King of the universe. Some are hard to sing because they expose our frail, sinful hearts. And programming is not a magnet to gather, but a hospital for the hurting.

The church is not a gigantic gumball machine for people to get all their needs met. Pastors, stop telling your people it is! The church is more like a family. And family is messy and painful and hard and requires grace-saturated endurance. This family has authority, but is not authoritarian. This family stays and works out its problems. This family laughs together and cries together and bears burdens together. We do it together. No goods and services—just brothers and sisters learning to do life in a way that honors Jesus with every step and every breath.