The telephone is a powerful tool for ministry. I can remember an Iowa blizzard, when I had trouble getting to the small church I served as a college student. I had called early in the morning to say I was setting out on the 75-mile drive but wasn’t sure if I could make it. The people waited in their homes until the party-line calls came, "The preacher’s here!" That Sunday morning we had more tractors and trucks in the parking lot than cars. Years later, as a pastor, I did a fair amount of pastoral calling on the telephone. Once it was known that I would call in their homes when necessary, such calls were appreciated.

With that personal experience it is troubling to read of people not being able to get through the technological barriers, and, perhaps also, the disinterest on the other end of the line, to speak to a real person in a church.

Not all congregations can afford telephone receptionists and secretaries, but "Call Forwarding" can direct calls to the homes of volunteers, who can take messages for the pastor or whomever else is being called. Amazingly, the research shows that at almost half of the churches at which human interaction was not established there was not even an answering machine available to capture or relay a message.