And if people in the congregation live with instant-access tools like pagers and cell phones, they'll also expect their pastor to be accessible at the touch of a button. Pastors want to be available to their congregations and ministry-team members. One measure of pastoral effectiveness is how responsive he or she is to people. Missed messages and unreturned phone calls are real turnoffs. One small church I served made it mandatory for all phone calls to be returned within four hours after a message was left on an answering machine.
Technology can be a terrific servant.
But it can also be a terrible taskmaster. To keep a balanced perspective on how to use technology without feeling controlled by it, we should understand what kind of tools best suit a church's expectations of a pastor as well as its needs for connecting. Then, too, we should decide what communication strategies strengthen pastoral performance and help churches to coordinate ministry. Furthermore, the costs of these tools and services continue to decrease, making them affordable to even the smallest churches, which so often demand the most attention from pastors. Large churches are also embracing new technology, partly because it helps leaders stay in touch with each other about coordinating ministries and programs.