“Welcome to First Baptist Church, the end of your search for a friendly church. Our Sunday services are at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. with Bible study at 9:30 a.m. and midweek prayer on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Our staff is anxious to meet your needs. Punch 1 for the pastor, 2 for the minister of music, 3 for the youth minister, or just hold the line for our church secretary."

“Our office is open from 9 a.m. to  4 p.m. If you’ve reached this message after hours, feel free to leave a message and it will be returned promptly the next business day.”

Not the response you were hoping for when you need to let the pastor know of the death of a member, an emergency surgery demanding prayer, or a suicide attempt by a teenager. Even an anxious groomsmen trying to locate a wedding may need more than a street address to hurriedly get directions to your church.

How accessible is your church’s ministry when a person calls after hours? Churches often turn to a phone answering system to save staff time routing calls or a single-staff church might find an answering machine to be the only way to take messages when the pastor is away. However, ministry may be diminished as technology is introduced. Ministers who are glad to help in times of crisis simply can’t be found when the answering machine offers no further contact.

“We have a Christian force that is technologically armed to meet the needs of our metropolitan as well as isolated, rural communities across America, but herein lies our dilemma,” stated Bob Hataway, a Southern Baptist chaplain in Keller, Texas, who often finds it difficult to locate a pastor to respond to an emergency need. Hataway leads a ministry to truckers called Transalive whereby he utilizes local ministers to contact families in the event of a death or serious accident.

He shared his concern that churches unintentionally substitute technology for ministry, patterning phone systems after the large corporate entities and removing the human touch. While he has no problem with recording devices as a tool, he added, “It’s how we use them that takes the dimension of ministry from its functional ability.”

Hataway suggested churches place an emergency contact number at the beginning of the voice message. “Few who have a need for help in an emergency want to listen to a litany of church service hours and staff listings.”

Multi-staff churches can set up one cell phone for emergency after hours and rotate it between the ministerial staff, he advised. A single-staff church might list either the pastor’s cell phone or home number as the emergency contact.

What if a Baptist family traveling through your area has an emergency need and has a friend search online for contact information on a Southern Baptist church in the area? Do you know whether the listing provided on a form years ago by a secretary who no longer works for the church is still accurate? It doesn’t take long to find out.

Every year about this time local Baptist associations relay to the Southern Baptist Convention the information gathered on the Annual Church Profile.

When the church’s address, phone number and website change that information is updated in the church search directory available at www.sbc.net. Do a simple search of your church by name or city and you can determine whether that listing is correct. If not, follow the online prompts to correct the listing.

Check the listing for the state convention as well. At www.sbtexas.com you’ll find that information on the opening page through the tab for Affiliated Churches. You can search by city or zip code to locate your church’s listing. Email addresses change often so be sure that the contact information is correct. A more generic address such as office@firstbaptist.org or pastor@firstbaptist. org will avoid personalized email addresses becoming out of date when staff changes.

Both the SBC and SBTC will include an after hours emergency number listing if offered by the church.

When churches and pastors become more accessible during crisis situations, opportunities for ministry arise beyond the initial emergency call. After making a contact on that day when the family receives horrible news, a local church can be available to assist if needed with a funeral service, minister throughout the grieving process and attend to their spiritual needs. Such simple changes multiply a church’s ministry beyond the nine to five office hours.