The 'Wired' Pastor

I have a number of friends (including some younger clergy) who are all caught up on the latest gadgets and ways of being connected. I, on the other hand, am hopelessly behind the times (my phone has no internet!) and because of the little Luddite inside of me, part of me likes it that way. These up-to-date friends of mine, through their all purpose mobile device, are constantly in touch with email, facebook, twitter, blogs, texts, voicemail, Myspace, Google and (lest we forget) phone calls. This sometimes makes uninterrupted conversation with these individuals frustratingly difficult to sustain. I sometimes wonder, and with an uneasy feeling, about the spiritual effects of today's hyper-connectivity.

Here is a really thought provoking blog post on the "wired pastor".
Here is a quote:

In response to our frenetic world, in which we can speak instantly to anyone around the world but have very little to say, I would argue pastors should be inaccessible more often than not. Part of our problem is that we get agitated if the email bell doesn’t go off every 30 seconds. Over against this, the pastor needs to teach us, to embody patience, or even silence. If my pastor, for example, is always instantly emailing me back, when is she praying for me? When is she quietly sitting in God’s presence, waiting for a word for us for Sunday? When is she nourishing her own soul in a way unrelated to her service to us, but just because God is good?

Now that I think of it, I wonder if part of my attraction to the liturgical church has been precisely as a reaction to the technologizing of every other aspect of life. Going to a worship service where all is basically as it was a hundred, even a thousand, years ago is spiritually refreshing somehow, like a hike in the deep woods where the sounds of highways and airplanes do not intrude.