the second bounce

I ran across a phrase in an article by John McCardell in The Atlantic:

"...about as effective as a parachute that opens on the second bounce."

I have never heard that before. I don't know if he made it up or it had been around for awhile.
Some things we do at church are effective; some are not. I wonder which ones are "about as effective as a parachute that opens on the second bounce." Whatever they are, we ought to stop doing them. Can you identify anything like that?


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