1868-1883 When Potter became rector of Grace Church (New York City), the previous rector had just died and before that he was partially disabled by a carriage accident in 1865. Therefore, he was unable to provide leadership, and "the church drifted". The focus of its activities was its members. There were Sunday worship and a Sunday School. The women had a Sewing Society. The minister visited his parishioners. In contrast, Potter possessed "immense practical perceptions". Potter brought a different understanding of parish life. He believed that "religion should minister to the whole man". He introduced new things such as "Christmas trees, and choirs of men and boys, and daily services and weekly communions, and flowers at Easter, and church schools and church infirmaries, and parish houses". Under Potter's leadership Grace Church reached "out to an environing community". Under Potter's leadership Grace Church became known as "New York's most picturesque and useful parish". George F. Nelson, who was Potter's assistant at Grace Church, attributes the progress to the fact that "the Rector and his Vestry were brethren dwelling together in unity. A discordant note among them was unthinkable". Problem of the poor The Panic of 1873 brought "hard times" for the people. This condition made Potter's work more difficult. It also made him face "the problem of the poor" and "to study it more carefully." In 1874, Potter used what he had learned in his study about poverty in his Sixth Annual Account of the Parish Work Potter when he addressed the question of how best to aid and relieve the poor. In summary, he said the following: "It should be remembered, in the first place, that no rule for helping poor people, any more than any other people, can be a sweeping one of universal application." There are "professional paupers." They are "not entitled to the indiscriminate benefactions" which increase the number of such paupers. The "truer and more Christian charity" would be to help them find work. There are those who held "the clearest claim upon our sympathy and help." These are "the sick, the crippled, the blind or imbecile, or otherwise incapacitated; poor women and untaught childhood; children and young girls left orphaned or alone in this great city; persons of gentle nurture and antecedents who have met with reverses; all these at our doors, and then the family of the stranger and the missionary beyond them, alike