By Jean Fitzpatrick

Leafing through this week's classifieds in New York magazine, I came across the following ad in the real estate section:

WE NEED HELP BUYING AN APT on the UWS (editor's note: that's Upper West Side), 3bd2bath. YOU are a philanthropic, wealthy person who would not miss a million bucks and would be interested in donating (or even investing) in a highly targeted manner: to my family. WE are a wonderful, hard working middle class family who contributes to our UWS community, is entrenched, happy and desperately wants to remain on the UWS (lest the city lose yet another wonderful family to the burbs). We can afford 600-700k, so you see the predicament. Can you help us??

Well, I thought, here are some grown-ups who believe in Santa Claus. So this is what Manhattan real estate prices have come to, that people who can afford to pay more than half a million for an apartment are looking for handouts. There's an absurd Little Match Girl tone to the whole ad: urban Mom, Dad, and kids standing on the sidewalk outside the Upper West Side's elegant prewar buildings, filled with longing, fingers numb in the cold. In a borough where many pay exorbitant sums to live in apartments not much bigger than a sectional sofa, the ad's Manhattan real estate envy is familiar to most of us, writ large. Now, there's something to be said for the idea that not every condo and coop in the city should end up owned by Wall Street people or international real estate investors. And with the richest two percent of people on earth owning more than half of the household wealth, maybe it's inevitable these days that middle-class people will feel poor. Maybe soon we'll be seeing similar requests from people asking for a Sub Zero kitchen ("WE are fabulous cooks!") or a Bose stereo ("WE only listen to classical music played on authentic period instruments!") or a $4,000 Capresso cappuccino maker ("WE only brew coffee with whole, fair-trade beans!").

I couldn't help noticing the theology here. In explaining their "predicament," the ad's writers appeal to the good old Protestant work ethic: they are a "wonderful, hard working middle class family who contributes to our UWS community." It's the word "wonderful" that got to me. Here's a chance, during this Advent season, to consider the difference between Santa Claus and Jesus. We are brought up to believe that if we're good boys and girls, we'll get everything on our Christmas list. Most of us recognize, by the time we reach adulthood, that life just doesn't add up that way. "Wonderful" people, we discover, experience suffering, disappointment, and loss. There are "wonderful" people living in cities and suburbs -- in New York and all over the world -- who who go to bed hungry, lack basic health care, and have no roof at all over their heads, let alone a home with two bathrooms. Talk about predicaments.

No wonder the story of a holy child born in a filthy manger touches us so deeply. We are invited to imagine, in the midst of so much hardship, the presence of joy. We're reminded that we can avoid experiencing a kind of envy that is not only unappealing, but painful, if we turn our gaze to people who have less than we do and focus on reaching out with prayers and help. And in doing so we feel blessed -- no matter where we live.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst, is a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Kit Carlson

Forces are at play in our world and in our church, and one of the best assessments I have heard lately of those forces came from a community reform expert. Peter Plastrik, co-author of Banishing Bureaucracy and The Reinventors’ Fieldbook, spoke recently at a training session for community leaders in East Lansing, Michigan. He outlined five forces, five “Gs”, that are affecting communities across America.

As he spoke, it struck me that these forces are the same ones affecting our church.

Plastrik’s “Five G’s” are:

Grand Rapids – as a metaphor for the global economy. The internet, easy international travel, and the ability to move jobs anywhere in the world have changed the economies of communities once based on manufacturing and local enterprises.

Goat meat – as a metaphor for immigration and all the challenges it brings. Consumption of goat meat in the U.S. has skyrocketed as immigrants from countries that eat goat arrive, bringing their national cuisines with them.

Greenland – as a metaphor for global warming. The ice on this large Arctic island is vanishing, and with climate change comes a host of new challenges for each community.

Gay people – as a metaphor for all the cultural challenges surrounding gender, age, and sexuality.

Geoffrey Canada – creator of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a community-based organization that seeks to serve 9,000 children, providing support from birth through college. Canada serves as a metaphor for self-empowered citizens, who don’t wait for government or other institutions to solve community problems.

A member of the audience added a sixth “G”, the Graying of America, as the long-promised demographic shift of the Baby Boom into old age begins at last.

Plastrik’s “G-forces” made a lot of sense to me. When people ask, “What is happening to our church?” they often think in terms of political movements -- liberals versus conservatives, progressives versus traditionalists. Instead, one might look at the power of these forces, playing out in the parishes and dioceses and provinces of The Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Communion.

G-1: The worldwide Anglican Communion was not so prominent 30 years ago. As the global economy has taken shape, a global Communion emerged in prominence and consideration along with it. And just as a global economy knows no borders, ecclesiastical relationships that cross borders and jurisdictions follow the same pattern of connections that criss-cross the planet and minimize the importance of local communities.

G-2: Rapid immigration into the United States brought Anglicans from around the world into American parishes. No longer is Anglican worship uniform across The Episcopal Church. Inculturation has come to us, and so we sing from many traditions, read scripture in other languages, practice Pentecost every day of the church year. The values and expectations of other cultures become part of our conversations about sex, worship, politics and a host of other issues.

G-3: The churches of the Gulf Coast still recovering from Katrina understand how climate change can affect our churches and communities. There is more to come, and Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana has already seen it coming. His call for the church to focus on ministries of relief and development instead of on schism and division comes out of hard experience.

G-4: There is not much to say that hasn’t been said about the cultural challenges of inclusion and acceptance of GBLT people. Joan Chittister said it best perhaps … the Anglicans just got to the issue earlier than most.

G-5: Self-empowered citizens, entrepreneurial community activists … the church is full of them. Duncan, Iker, Minns and those who would develop an alternate structure are entrepreneurs in their way. Why wait for the agonizingly slow movement of the Communion and its provinces to address Windsor, gay bishops, a Covenant, or any other issue? Why not set up one’s own alternative diocese, alternative province, alternative Communion?

Finally, there is that sixth G-force, one that Plastrik dismissed as not of interest to him. But the Graying of America, the graying of the Episcopal Church, is a real force. As I look across the faces of my parish, I see a community that has failed to effectively share the gospel with the generations coming after it. There are faithful elders and faithful Boomers … most of whom have grown children who do not themselves attend church, who are not raising the grandchildren in any faith, and who have abandoned religion as irrelevant. The leading edge of the church is dying off, and it is not replenishing itself.

And so the question is probably not – what to do about gay bishops or authorized rites of blessing. The question is really: How will we navigate these powerful forces? In a global, migratory, entrepreneurial, aging, culturally conflicted, climactically threatened world … how are we going to be Church? How will we proclaim the good news of Christ in the face of forces beyond our control?

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. In 2003, she played the apostle Paul on the world's first internet reality series, The Ark, a project of the Christian humor website Ship of Fools.

By Micah Jackson

Before I entered the seminary, I worked in business. I don’t think I’m at all unusual in that way. Many of the clerics I encounter previously earned their bread in the for-profit business world. Some of them were very successful by any measure. It’s also true that a great many of the people sitting in Episcopal pews each Sunday are businesspeople of one kind or another. So perhaps it’s not so surprising to find that many think of a typical Episcopal parish as if it were a small business. After all, any business with an annual budget of 300-500K (not unreasonable for a medium size parish) or more, with hundreds or thousands of loyal customers and committed paid and volunteer staff, would have to be considered worth the attention of a competent manager who keeps up with the latest trends in the business literature.

But despite the many similarities between a typical Episcopal parish and a typical small business, the advice given to the latter may not automatically fit the former, at least so it seems to me. For one thing,parishes are not designed to maximize economic value for their
shareholders, as one classical definition of a business puts it, and they are not free to start manufacturing another product when market forces shift. Variations in the product are good and necessary, of course, but we are all in the Gospel business, and that’s just all there is to say about that.

So it can be tricky to evaluate the effect that a particular trendy business idea might have on the Church. Doing so faithfully requires, at least, tremendous creativity and a good hold on the values of that church body. One such trendy business idea is “The Long Tail” a reconsideration of Pareto’s Principle, which most of us know as “The 80/20 Rule.” In business this would suggest that the top 20% of a business’ customers generate 80% of the sales. In the church world, we might see the principle predicting that the top 20% of pledges bring in 80% of the budget, or that 80% of the sermons come from only 20% of the Bible. In an individual case, of course, the actual ratio may be different, but overall, Pareto’s Principle has stood the test of analysis.

Chris Anderson, in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, notices an interesting thing about the way that technology (especially the Internet) affects the 80/20 rule. (Click here to see an interactive demo of The Long Tail, skip down to the asterisk to avoid the even slightly technical language to follow) He sees that as it becomes possible to reach customers farther into the niche markets (at the extreme end of the power curve) eventually there comes a point when the area under the curve (revenue) past the inflection point is greater than that before it. In other words, it is more profitable to serve these niche customers.* Consider Amazon.com. Despite the huge number of hit books they sell, the lion’s share of their sales (and therefore revenue) are books that are best described as unusual or obscure (the industry term is “backlist.”) It’s the same with Netflix, or eBay. Websites that cater to small markets, like egg noodle sculpture enthusiasts, also leverage the Long Tail.

There’s an argument to be made that websites like this one are benefiting from The Long Tail, as it would be difficult or impossible to distribute this content in magazine form, especially if we had to resort to traditional advertising support to do it. I know for sure that my feast-daily podcasts about the saints at St. Jerome’s Chapel draw a far, far larger audience than they ever could have if people had to come to my church to hear those sermons. Nevertheless, I don’t think that the Episcopal Church should start thinking of running parishes that way.

A traditional brick and mortar business (like a parish) simply can’t reach the number of customers necessary to benefit from The Long Tail. And if it could, it would be a tremendous burden, both from the parish end (where it would result in an endless schedule of low-attendance specialized services) and from the National Church end (where lots more tiny missions would be necessary, with the increased stress on clerical resources that comes with it). But thanks to the ease of reaching people via the Internet, the National Church and the Anglican Communion are not brick and mortar entities only, and neither is an individual parish. We can reach out to and minister with people from all over the world, greatly magnifying the Gospel’s impact in the world. Maybe that will benefit our parish, or another one, but we’re all really just divisions of the same company, right?

Jesus told the disciples to go out into the deep water, where there are lots of fish, just not all gathered together. When they hauled in their nets, they were full to breaking. The Internet is the deep water of contemporary society, and paying attention to the Long Tail could make or
break evangelism in the 21st century. Besides, Jesus never said “And if I am lifted up from the earth, I will gather the most profitable 20% to myself.”

The Rev. Micah Jackson, a priest of the Diocese of Chicago, is a doctoral student in Homiletics at the Graduate Theological Union. His personal blog is St. Jerome's Library.