Growing up I had a steady diet of Fruity Pebbles and Nick-at-Nite television. One of the shows I watched was Happy Days. So I was kind of excited to see the other day an entire channel dedicated to Happy Days on PlutoTV.
The other night, I grabbed some Fruity Pebbles and decided to give the show another go. But I was shocked by what I saw. There was no Richie Cunningham. No Ralph Malph. The set looked different. The plot seemed to center around Fonzie, which was fine but the whole thing was weird. I knew that Happy Days had several spin-offs, was this some weird spin-off?
Nope. This was only an episode a couple seasons after Fonzie had “jumped the shark”. Fonzie, still donning his leather jacket, jumps over a shark to prove his masculinity. (Apparently a beard and rifle wasn’t a requirement back then). From this moment forward the show changed—it moved away from Richie and the Gang to being more about Fonzie.
According to a couple of college buddies who coined the term, this “jumping the shark” was the moment which spelled the end for Happy Days as a quality show. A gimmick was used in order to capture attention, but because it wasn’t an organic gimmick it changed the very nature of the show. Once you go down that path it’s pretty much impossible to return.
How Preachers Can Jump the Shark
When I’m preaching I want to make sure that I am sharing God’s Word as effectively as possible. Being true to the text is my first aim. But I think that also means sharing a text with the passion that it deserves. We should share God’s Word in such a way that it will grab attention.
But we should make sure our illustrations are organic and serve the text. When a television show “jumps the shark” its typically because they have moved away from the core of what made it successful in the first place. So in preaching we’re “jumping the shark” anytime we’re distracting from the person and message of Jesus. Our sermons should point to Jesus. Always. And every illustration we string together should be for highlighting and shining a spotlight on Christ. But far too often things like opening illustrations can give away far too much or be so distracting that the text ends up serving the illustration instead of the illustrations serving the text.
There is another shark principle which I think can serve us well.
Hide the Shark
Jaws, which has been dubbed the original summer blockbuster, was a two hour film about a shark. But you may be surprised to learn that Jaws doesn’t make a full appearance in the show until the 1 hour and 21 minute mark.
The movie is about Jaws but the title character doesn’t make a full appearance until 3/4 of the way into the show. Now some of this was because the mechanical shark was a piece of junk and so Spielberg had to minimize the shots. But it was also rather creative way to build suspense. Is Jaws about a shark or is it about fear of the unknown? What’s more memorable about Jaws, the shark itself or Daah dun, daah dun, daah dun, dun dun, dun dun, dun dun?*
Chris Anderson makes this point in his book on TED Talks:
Occasionally, speakers try to bring too much to their opening paragraph. They essentially give away the punchline of their talk. ‘Today I’m going to explain to you that the key to success as an entrepreneur is simply this: determination.’ A worthy goal. But the speaker may have already lost the audience. They think they know the talk already…so instead of giving it all away up front, imagine what kind of language will seduce the audience into wanting to come along for the ride. (Anderson, 165)
I’ve been told by various public speaking experts that you want to tell people what you are going to tell them early on in the talk. I think there is some wisdom to that—but I also think we need to be skillful in hiding the shark. They need to know that something is coming but not necessarily what. We should be leading our hearers along a journey with the text of Scripture.
I’m not always the best at doing this. But I try to preach the Bible in a bit more of a narrative fashion with the text driving us the entire way. Doing this, though, it is imperative that we have deeply engrained the principle of not jumping the shark. Every illustration and every step along the journey cannot be about those steps but it has to be about what we are leading to—it has to be pointing us to Christ.
If you’re a preacher try something like this next Sunday. Hopefully your people know that Jesus is coming…hopefully the know that you’re going to be proclaiming the gospel…but you can still tease it out. They know it’s coming but they don’t know how. That’ll keep them locked in as you exposit the life-giving text.
