The lockdowns have become a positive force for decentralizing corporate business. They have undermined the downtown office.
This is an unintended consequence of the lockdowns. The only thing comparable to this in recent history is the transformation of DARPA's version of the Internet into our version. What was designed by military planners as a way to centralize the power of the military in wartime has decentralized everything else in peacetime.
Let's consider the economic benefits of working from home. This lowers the cost of real estate for the company. The real estate is owned by the employees. The companies don't have to pay for it. At some point, they will cancel their leases for high-cost real estate in high-rise buildings in downtown areas. There is no question that that is going to benefit the companies' bottom lines.
They could have done this a decade ago. The lockdowns forced them to do what they should already have done.
Is this a case of Bastiat's fallacy of the thing unseen? Is this a broken window phenomenon? Is society poorer as a result of this coercion? In most areas of our lives, yes. But I'm talking about corporate culture, not the overall effects of the lockdowns on society.
Senior managers before the lockdowns were restrained from adopting work from home by a corporate culture that focused on hierarchical centralization. The downtown office has been common for a century. There is such a thing as social inertia. But as soon as the lockdowns were imposed, this inertia was broken. It became acceptable socially and structurally for companies to decentralize their real estate.
Because of this breaking of the inertia barrier, we are not going to see a complete return to the old system. Those companies that force employees to come back to work at a central office will find that they are paying more for real estate than their competitors are. The competitors have transferred the real estate costs to the employees. The employees have not been compensated for this. By this, I mean they have not been compensated in money. But they have been compensated by greater leisure time. They don't commute these days. That is worth an hour a day, five days a week. This doesn't count the costs of gasoline and depreciation on their cars. Also, this reduction in commuting expenses is a nontaxable increase in wealth. Employees gain more leisure time. Leisure time is not taxable. That's the tremendous economic benefits associated with cutting hours worked without cutting salaries. A monetary raise is taxable. A leisure raise is not.
THE #1 ECONOMIC BARRIER TO MASS EVANGELISM
The cost of real estate is the greatest single barrier to planting new churches. Most people live in cities, and urban real estate is expensive.
The church generates income one day a week. A business can generate income seven days a week, and most of them are open at least six days a week. So, in the competition for user-accessible real estate, businesses can outbid all but the most successful mega-churches.
It takes about one acre of asphalt parking space for every 100 adults. The typical Protestant church over the last 250 years has had about 100 adults. If a church wants to grow beyond this, it has to find real estate to accommodate it. It will have to pay a great deal of money. It will almost certainly have to go into debt.
This is why Protestant churches sometimes start out as storefront churches, especially in inner-city areas. That’s the only real estate that startup churches can afford. They are located in strip malls.
Let us say that a church is serious about an evangelism program. I realize this is bordering on the fantastic, but let’s assume it for the sake of argument. The pastor encourages every family to invite another family to attend the following Sunday.
Now we will cross the border into the realm of fantasy. Every family invites another family to attend the following Sunday.
Now we cross into the psychedelic. Every invited family accepts the invitation.
On Sunday morning, the parking lot will fill up long before all of the invited families show up. In fact, half of the congregation will not get a parking space. Let’s assume the grace of God: parking spaces along sidewalks nearby. Everybody can find a parking space.
Problem: every pew in the church will be filled before the church service begins. The typical church operates at 80% seating capacity. Above 80%, visitors won’t come back. The church looks too crowded. They will agree to pack themselves in on the Sunday before Christmas and on Easter Sunday, but they will not return the following Sunday.
The premise of every evangelism program is that it will not work well. If it works well, the church is trapped. It must restructure how it operates. It has to go to two services on Sunday morning. Churches do not go to three services, at least not outside South Korea.
So, if there were truly efficient evangelism in which everyone invites just one family, and there is 100% response, every church would run out of space within one month. The churches would have to be operating three services every morning to do this.
At that point, churches would have to start looking for property to buy. They would have to go to a bank to borrow money to build the church. But the competition would drive up the cost of real estate.
This is why all talk about mass evangelism has faded in modern times. The pastors don’t believe it’s economically possible. Any pastor who did believe that it is possible would know that the church would have to start looking for more space within one month. It would have to have the money to make the move. The new members would not be tithing members. There also would be tremendous pressure on pastors to do more work at no additional pay.
In short, pastors may talk about evangelism, but they don’t preach it.
WORSHIP AT HOME
All of this has changed today. Every church could adopt the policy that corporations are adopting all over the world. They would transfer the cost of the real estate back to the members. They would encourage the members to start home churches.
The Internet allows this. Because of the lockdowns, churches are broadcasting on YouTube and Facebook every Sunday morning. This is considered normal now. It was not considered normal last February.
I watch a Sunday morning streaming service every Sunday morning. My congregation has about 500 members. YouTube reveals how many people are viewing the service. It is always about the same every week: somewhere between 65 and 75.
Technically, this could be a permanent way of solving the real estate problem. There is no reason why churches could not build their liturgies around streaming services. They would have to restructure the services in terms of home churches. They would have to rethink the Lord’s supper and who has the authority to serve it. That would be a revolution for Protestant churches. They are not willing to face this. So, they have generally stopped offering regular communion since last March. They are now imitating the Catholics, who had to stop the sacrament of weekly confession before mass a generation ago because of a shortage of priests.
There is no technical reason why churches could not have weekly services in homes across America or any other nation. Large flatscreen TVs are cheap. High-speed Internet connections are already installed. Except in inner cities, and perhaps in low density rural areas, streaming services could solve the problem of real estate expenses, thereby also solving the technical problem of mass evangelism.
If this happened, churches would once again have to take seriously the Great Commission.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
They don’t want to do this. It would cause too much upheaval in their congregations. That is what growth always does. It disrupts familiar patterns.
CONCLUSION
The major barrier to mass evangelism can be overcome. It has not existed for a decade. But today, churches have made the technological-liturgical breakthrough.
Work from home finally became a reality because of the lockdowns. Will worship from home also become a reality?
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