Copyright: © 2003 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.

My youngest daughter Sarah and her husband David work in New York City in television. There's a colourful but all-but-inscrutable figure of speech they use in showbiz that Sarah interpreted for me: "jumping the shark".

It takes its meaning from an incident in the TV series of some seasons back called Happy Days. The show was beginning to lose its early verve and creativity, and its scriptwriters became increasingly desperate for new plot-lines. In one episode, the script required one of the characters, "Fonzie", to jump over a shark on water-skis.

It was downhill for the whole series from that moment on. Its story lines and incidents became more and more preposterous and far-fetched. And viewers understandably tuned out. To use yet another figure of speech, the series went south. (Where does that idiom come from?)

So "jumping the shark" refers to that moment when something loses its original vision and creative vigor, and begins to adopt desperate and inappropriate measures, but nevertheless begins its slide down the long slope to oblivion.

I've had some nasty things to say, before in this space, about the pernicious effects of the so-called "church growth" movement and its liturgical expression in "mega- church" worship. See Essays 3, 6, 10, 18, 20, 24, 29, 32, 36, 37, 46 and 59 above.

In my view, the "church growth" movement seeks to "grow" churches by desperate and inappropriate measures, and succeeds only in jumping the shark. As I have it, among its prescriptions for "church growth": No children in worship: They annoy adults. No black faces in a white congregation: Only homogeneous groups will grow. And so-called "contemporary" music exclusively: guitars and drum-sets and microphones and amplifiers and boom-box speakers. And no hymnbooks, please: the lyrics to "praise choruses" are beamed onto screens by projectors. This is presumably what baby boomers have come to expect in corporate gatherings; let's give the customers what they expect.

From one perspective, the "church-growth" people have it right. This is indeed the way you "grow" a group today. The people come in the door, with this kind of "worship". The parking lot of our local "mega-church" is at least twice as full, on a given Sunday morning, as the parking lot at our own little Lutheran church across the street. And, as I have it, no less than one half the total membership gain for the last year in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America may be credited to a single "mega-church" congregation in the American Southwest.

Yes, it's tough to argue against success. National and regional Offices of Evangelism, in particular, in almost every Christian denomination, are sorely tempted by the seductions of "mega-church"-style worship. But we could ask --I myself would want to ask-- Is what is "grown" here the "catholic" church? Or something else? See Essay 29.

And yes, I've attended "worship opportunities" at the very "mega-church" noted above, and at a five-day worship workshop that same congregation sponsored on tour across North America. The experiences were lively and engaging. But it wasn't Christian worship; it was a performance, a presentation. It was a kind of Nineteenth Century revival meeting, dressed up in Twentieth Century glitz.

The "mega-church" across the street in my community is an enormous new building built like a theatre or a concert hall. It features an enormous platform fully four feet above the peoples' level, and its permanent fixture is neither altar nor ambo, but an enormous drum-set, up center stage, with looming speaker-boxes to left and right --I call it The Church of the Holy Drum-Set. You cannot convince me that "worship" in such a setting is anything but hierarchical and presentational. The inescapable impression: The leaders up there on that platform have something I don't have, that I need, that they will present to me.

What those leaders present to me may be entertaining. It may even be inspiring. But it ain't Christian worship. And that ain't a Christian congregation. They may be nice attractive people. But they are not one with their leaders, nor their leaders one with them. The leaders own the franchise. Laypeople have become their clergy's customers. And there's a clear hierarchy implied: I am the object of their leaders' presentations. That's not the "priesthood of all believers", as I understand it.

As for reaching "seekers", every "traditional" eucharist in my little liturgical Lutheran parish is a "seeker service". These days, you can't worship anywhere, in any form or style, without seekers present. It was ever thus; it's more than ever true today.

And I haven't even begun to address the triumphalism implied in the building's architecture, nor the dumbing-down of the Gospel, the infantilizing, implied in the music and "liturgy". Says a former member: "When you enter that church these days, you've got to leave your brains at the door."

Yes, sadly, an identical indictment can be leveled against many of our "traditional" Gothic-style church buildings, and against much of our "traditional" liturgical Lutheran worship: These too can be hierarchical and presentational --not to mention triumphalist and infantilizing.

Still more sadly, we North American Lutherans have been through all this before. One hundred and fifty years ago, Pennsylvania's Samuel Simon Schmucker led a movement to "Americanize" Lutheran worship, to make us more like other North American denominations of that day, that is, more Revivalist. Some smart graduate student at a Lutheran seminary ought to write a thesis comparing that Nineteenth Century movement with today's "neo-revivalists" in "church growth".

My bottom line: In our current infatuation with "church growth", aren't we jumping the shark? Put another way: Does Jesus need disciples this badly?