I have my own thoughts about this and they are very simple. Based on my own experience, hence the simplicity. When I first had the chance to buy online, what were the titles that I looked for? Bear in mind that we are talking about importing from the USA, waiting six weeks for delivery and paying any taxes that might fall due on CDs or videos over a certain price. The books and videos that I bought initially were those that had been on my "must get" list for many a long year. The only reason I hadn't got them earlier was because they were unavailable in the United Kingdom. So I ordered "The Clandestine Marriage" by Garrick & Colman and "Dream Story" by Arthur Schnitzler. I went on to purchase CDs of some my favourite childhood tracks plus assorted material that I'd had on vinyl for many years and which had now been re-mastered onto CD. The range of the US catalogues was much broader than the UK, a situation that was repeated when it came to the choice of videos (although it was necessary to have a player that could cope with the US video system).

Three and a bit years down the line and the gaps in my bookshelves have been filled, along with the spaces in my audio and video collections. I still make the occasional online purchase, but nothing like the heady days of those first few online shopping trips. I guess I'm not alone. The bubble has burst. Online shopping is a wonderful thing and I'm in no danger of backsliding, but the cybershops must recognise that the bonanza cannot last for ever. Their financial projections must now begin to take account of this.

Amazon listed the book but offered no discount, presumably because this was a title they would have to order in from a specialist publisher with whom they could not expect to establish a brisk trading relationship. The same was true for Blackwell's, although in all fairness they have never laid claim to being a discounter. BOL could offer a ten per cent discount and Proxis quoted a price that was greater than the publisher's recommendation. WHSmith Online offered a thirty per cent discount on publisher's price; postage would be extra but capped at fifteen pounds. I went for it - but do bear in mind that a price comparison based on one book should not be taken as general indicator of the value-for-money offered by each of these internet shopping sites. The shops vary in the way that they despatch orders and charge for deliveries. Don't assume that this will be just the same as when you last placed an order - and watch out for bargain promotions such as free postage within a limited timespan.

On this occasion, WHS Online ("the internet bookshop") was unable to swallow my order - a pre-authorisation failure, I was eventually told. Unfortunately they waited for me to notice that my order was not being processed, and I had to e-mail them in order to set things in motion. Next they found that they had only one copy in stock. This was sent out to me whilst we waited for the other nine and twenty to come through from their wholesalers. I would have preferred the option to receive either all 30 or none at all - but perhaps I'm being just a shade too fussy. The pre-authorisation cloud brooded over my piece of plastic for the customary seven days, which made me wonder what on earth is achieved by reserving slabs of credit if the supplier has no reasonable prospect of having the goods in stock within the timespan of the pre-authorisation. It was at this point that I noticed WHS had reduced the discount being offered on my particular title. Do they have a tracker system that responds to demand for specific titles and re-prices them accordingly? Their small print warns that any publishers' increases are liable to be passed through to the customer, but fortunately in this case they recognised that the adjustment was of their own doing and I was billed at the originally-quoted price. The books arrived within a reasonable timescale but the order was not entirely trouble-free. I don't like their pre-authorisation procedures and I would have wanted them to contact me as soon as they hit the initial processing glitch, rather than wait for me to spot that something was adrift.

At the same time as my dealings with WHSmith, I was also in the market for a range of useful publications from the Bible Reading Fellowship. Since they have a website and offer free postage for online orders, it seemed to make sense to order directly. They, too, pre-authorised my card for the full amount of my order despite not having the goods to hand. Maybe this is common practice. When the order arrived, three items were missing. I contacted BRF and was sent a copy of one of these; the other two were said to be out of stock and out of print. Given that they were BRF publications I was a bit miffed that my credit card had been debited for the full amount of the original order. Surely they ought to know what's in print and what isn't? A week later I received a cheque by way of refund for the unavailable items - but I have to tell you that some weeks later their website was still showing the deleted title as being open to order. I think that BRF might do well to polish up their act before the Trading Standards people turn up on their doorstep.

Cross-selling is the art of using your existing customer base as a source of leads to new and yet more profitable sales. It works well where you have a branch network with a substantial amount of face-to-face business. This is why the bank on the corner is keen to provide you with a personal banker who can suss out when your household insurance next falls due for renewal. By becoming your insurance agent as well as your banker they have pulled off a classic piece of cross-selling within the financial sector.

So your building society is keen to become your bank and your bank is keen to become your mortgage provider, while your mortgage provider would like to become your insurer and your insurer wants to provide your car breakdown service. The problem is that local branches are expensive piles of bricks and mortar. So all these folk are looking for ways of setting up shop on the internet, where they hope to repeat their cross-selling successes.

The trouble is, the technique doesn't entirely convert to the online purchasing situation. When you're online you can quickly and easily compare prices and specifications. You can read the small print (literally, by making it larger!) Many financial products that are sold on the internet come with an invitation to preview the policy or to study the terms and conditions. If they are in pdf format then you can print out the brochure almost exactly as if you had been mailed a copy of the printed version.

All of this amounts to a lot of power in the hands of the consumer. We can now cherry-pick our suppliers as they attempt to cherry-pick their customers. Financial houses are looking for clients with profiles that will prove profitable in more than one trading area. They often know exactly whom they want as customers (and whom they don't want). Equally the customers can now search out the best bits of what each financial house has on offer. Maybe you used to have (or perhaps you still do have) a single supplier as your source of a chequebook facility, a high-level savings account, a credit card, a mortgage and a car loan. Why not purchase each of those products from a different supplier, going for the best deal to cover each situation? As long as your money can travel electronically between the various accounts, you can switch funds at no charge and with comparatively little loss of interest during the clearing cycle.

Until recently I was something of a serial monogamist when it came to banking. Every ten years or so I would transfer my loyalty en bloc. Usually this upheaval was due to a change of post and moving to a new place with different local bank branches. This time, I thought differently. Just before the move, my bank upset me over one small thing. They restructured the interest levels on their savings accounts and failed to warn me that I was about to lose out unless I transferred into one of their new products. It was only when I saw the adverts designed to attract new customers that I began to realise I'd been short-changed. In due course full details arrived with my regular statement, but the damage was done. I got the message that they were keener to recruit new customers than they were to retain old customers. So I set to work on the net and simply opted for the best buys in each individual product area. I don't get paper statements from any of them but I do get excellent customer service, total operating transparency, and they pay me to use their services rather than vice-versa. Cash comes out of machines or as cashback at the shops. Deposits go over the Post Office counter (always hungry for cash) or alternatively cheques can be dropped into the nearest postbox.

What has this to do with the Church? Well, for years we have been quite good at cross-selling our products. Set foot in a church youth club and you might find a partner for life. Step inside the Toddler Group and before long you could be helping with the Sunday School. Turn up at the Old Folks Lunch and you'll be delighted at being collected and taken along to the Harvest Home. The Church as most of us know it today has been built on a network of social relationships. A lot of face-to-face contact revolving around a vast number of local branches.

How will the internet generation adapt to this? Consumer information networks will quickly spread the word about what your church will and will not do. I won't go into details because this is not the place to air the sort of issues that distinguish one church from other, even within the same denomination. Essentially people will want to cherry-pick what suits them best. I suspect that if they cannot get what they want then they will sometimes turn quite nasty. Most ministers have experienced "church rage" at one time or another. I had one chap who totally lost his cool when I explained why I could not support his daughter's application for an Archbishop's licence to be married at my church in preference to the church where she lived. "My daughter", he announced, "has always been brought up to believe that her Daddy can do absolutely anything for her." "Then it's high time she learnt otherwise" was my reaction to his request for me to name my price.

So the internet will expose us to a whole new breed of people who want to take just the bits that suit them. How do we react to this? Are we willing to see it as a challenge or do we want to go on the defensive? Some churches still do provide a whole week's worth of activities on the assumption that once you have become a Christian you will not want to look elsewhere for your educational and leisure pursuits. Others are learning to live with the "pick and mix" philosophy. They may have folk who worship once a week but never on Sunday: perhaps they attend the shopper's service on market day, or the mid-week pram service, or else the Saturday evening service or maybe even the 6 a.m. commuter special. Families may no longer be together in church. In the swinging sixties you could say to a 13 year old, "you're coming to church with us whether you like it or not". Not so today.

We've been through changes like this at other times in our history. Once upon a time, all you had to do was convert the leader of the tribe and he then called everybody together and said something to the effect that "from now on we're all Christians". Later we had the rise of the individual and the beginnings of women's emancipation. Today we are learning to cope with families where everyone over the age of 9 (and going down every year) seems to have a vote of their own. Children are ready not only to speak for themselves but also to act for themselves: clergy are increasingly vulnerable to punches, prods and throws during the course of Weddings and Christenings.

These are of course the same youngsters who expect to have their own e-mail address and chatroom alias. I'm all for civil liberties but it strikes me that unless someone puts their foot down somewhere we will be bringing up a generation of total strangers. If those who ask for an egg are given a serpent, then that would surely be the worst imaginable piece of cross-selling.