Copyright: © 1998 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

In my regular schedule each week, I try to find time to swim, before lunch, in our University's pool. One day a couple of months ago I found myself in the locker room sauna, when another faculty member joined me. As he took his seat he said, "Well, Paul, how's the God business?"

As I now remember the event, I laughed spontaneously, and returned some light-hearted quip. But the incident, and my friend's wisecrack, has recently returned to rankle me. "The God business": Is that what we're all about? Is that how we are perceived: as the local religion franchise, next door to McDonald's and Burger King?

Let's, for example, address this question: "Should a parish schedule two Services, one 'contemporary' and one 'traditional'?" I have attempted to answer this question, at greater length, in my essay, "Should we schedule a menu of worship services?" in the volume "What is 'Contemporary' Worship?" in the series "Open Questions in Worship," edited by Gordon Lathrop, published by Augsburg Fortress (1995; ISBN 0-8066-2798-0). My answer there, at the time somewhat tentative, was "no". But I'm still today persuaded that the principle I put forward in that essay ("One flock; one shepherd") has some fruitful, unexamined ecclesial implication for our common life today. (In any case, it's not the first time I've found myself the champion of a lost cause!)

The following paragraphs, then, attempt to present an enlargement of two of the four reasons I advanced in that essay for my negative answer to that question, and represent further my own grappling with my friend's quip.

In that published essay I maintained that "multiple Sunday Services, at the least, exact a terrible price in contemporary church life"; they are, at worst, "unfaithful ecclesiologically, and they are inimical to the needs of contemporary worship." Quoting myself from that essay:

One hears these days, for example, of congregations offering multiple Services in bewildering combination and variety. There are congregations offering, each weekend, three or even four identical so-called "traditional Services". There are congregations offering each Sunday both a "traditional Service" and a so-called "contemporary Service". There are still others which offer both a so-called "believers' Service" and a so-called "seekers' Service"; or a "traditional Service" and a "Youth Service"; or a "quiet, contemplative Service", by which is often meant a simple Service with much silence and without any music. [I have heard] of a congregation planning to offer, in its "menu" of "worship opportunities", a "Country and Western" Service...

Let me confess up front that I myself was, in the old days, an advocate of multiple Sunday Services. But that was then; this is now. Today, I'd be slow to recommend multiple Services.

In my published essay, I identified what I feel are "four good reasons to be suspicious of the movement to proliferate Sunday Service 'opportunities', as they are sometimes advertised. They are (1) the pastoral-professional, (2) the sociological, (3) the theological-ecclesial, and (4) the liturgical..."

It will be my third and fourth arguments against multiple Services that I want to enlarge here: the theological-ecclesial, and the liturgical. To "offer", within a single parish, distinct "worship opportunities", in a variety of time periods and in a variety of styles, is to deny the catholicity of the church; or, at the very least, to obscure its perception among our people.

Is the Christian church, is your Christian congregation, willing to be divided into a multiplicity of special-interest spiritual lobbies? When we "offer" multiple "worship opportunities" to distinct populations of worshippers, can ecclesial apartheid be far behind: a Service for "white folks" and a "separate-but-equal" Service for "black folks"? Substitute "traditional" and "contemporary" for "white" and "black" above, and you can begin to see the ecclesial threat in multiple "targeted" Services.

The strategy of "targeted worship opportunities" may well mean "church growth". It may indeed bring people in the door: people of "our kind". But what you end up with is not the church. It may be an interesting social club of like-minded and attractive people. But it is simply no longer the Christian church: rich and poor, old and young, black and white, conservative and liberal, all together at the table of the Lord. Surely one of the church's finest glories is its pleroma, its rich and even contradictory fullness.

And it's worth noting that you can't find that kind of fullness anywhere else in North America today: only in the church. I heard an anthropologist observe recently that North American society is the most segregated society on earth: age-segregated, class-segregated, income-segregated, education-segregated, opinion-segregated. The church's pleroma (fullness) stands as an important counter-cultural judgment against that kind of apartheid, and it's one of our glories!

I suppose the "church growth" enthusiasts are correct in their perception that such a diverse congregation will rarely "grow" as they would like to see "growth". I suppose they are correct in their insistence, quoting again, "that only those congregations will 'grow' that are fully homogenous: all of one colour, all of one age, all of one opinion, all of one sociological or economic class. And surely even in 'one flock; one shepherd' parishes, each assembly of worshippers, over time, takes on its own distinctive personality." Still quoting:

But is numerical growth [the only] good? And could it be that some "growth" is achieved at too high a cost: at the expense of faithfulness to the Gospel? Jesus, after all, did not urge "success" on his followers; he urged faithfulness...

In a consumerist society like ours, I fear that our congregations are increasingly under threat of being perceived as the local religion franchise, the local "God business": St.Peter's the local Lutheran franchise; St. Andrews Presbyterian, across the street, the local Reformed franchise.

A final argument against multiple Services: the liturgical. Quoting myself:

Multiple Services encourage a perception in our communities that worship consists of laypeople coming to their ordained clergy to be "filled", as to a gas station, a misperception at least as old as the Middle Ages, and against which Luther railed. And we have effectively denied, not only our oneness in Christ, but also our understanding of worship as the "work of the people". We have succumbed to our era's demonic addiction to consumerism. Our clergy have become purveyors of "designer liturgies": a liturgy for every taste and preference...

Do we really want our Christian congregations to be perceived as the local "religion franchise"? That is precisely the liturgical temptation with multiple Services; and, in my experience, the temptation in most so-called "church-growth" strategies: to succumb to an entrepreneurial, market-driven vision of the Christian mission, and to allow our congregations at worship to become the local "God business": patronized by laypeople, but owned and operated by ordained clergy, who must perforce dream up ever more clever menus and premiums, ever more ingenious marketing promotions, to keep the customers coming in the door...

(I guess I should not be surprised to learn, as I did recently from an, as they say, "informed source," that some ELCA executives have banned the Lathrop series from ELCA-sponsored workshop book displays!)

But, I hear you say, what if it becomes a matter of space? I suppose multiple Sunday Services then become a necessity, and a necessity preferable to building a bigger building. (Surely Western Christendom has more than enough church buildings!)

But in that case, can the congregation consider this: thinking of the second Service as simply a second congregation, utilizing the same building, but calling its own clergy and creating its own programme? Thus the principle "one flock; one shepherd" could still be honoured. The result would be two independent but (surprise!) actually cooperating congregations sharing the same space. (I told you I was a champion of lost causes!)

As I reflected in my published essay: "One wonders how the church at Ephesus struggled with that issue when the number of worshipers became too large to meet in the same house-church. There are questions of ecclesiology here that remain largely unaddressed..."

In any case, clergy with multiple Services and multiple staff do well to respect the reality that each assembly of believers is a separate sociological entity: they themselves (the clergy) have become, in effect, old-time nineteenth-century circuit riders.

"Church growth" has something to teach us, I'm sure. But it's not what they think. And it's not what you think. And all of us together have some ecclesiological homework to do.