"Hello there! Welcome to the Vicarage Answering Service. You now have five choices… If you are compulsive, press 1 - repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, get someone to press 2 for you. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3,4,5 and 6. If you are manic depressive, it doesn't matter which buttons you press. If you are paranoid, you don't need to press any buttons, we know who you are and what you want - stay on the line and one of our agents will be with you shortly".

Maybe that is just a little far-fetched, but these days you don't make many phone calls before you run into an answering machine. Some people use them to screen out unwanted callers, so if you keep hearing the same message then perhaps it's time you got the message.

I am indebted to a BBC World Service programme for the idea of a vicarage answering service worded as above. Yet before long I think we may see clergy with computer-assisted answering services that could make it hard to tell whether anyone is at home or not.

As yet, the technology is in its infancy, despite the recent flourish of "call centres" that act as central enquiry bureaux for large organisations. These are the "sweat shops" of today: vast concentrations of staff who simply act as a link between customers and computers. The burn-out rate is said to be high, on account of the many irate customers that the staff have to handle.

But also spare a thought for the callers! Yesterday I spent the best part of half an hour trying to contact British Telecom through the 150 enquiry number. The experience was bruising. Disjointed ringing tones, multiple menus and the sounds of a half-crazed saxophonist in between. Several announcements warned me not to proceed any further unless I have my detailed customer reference number immediately to hand; others assured me that my call was in a queue and would be answered in due course. When I finally got through, the customer service advisor explained that I should be speaking to someone else and she would therefore be transferring my call; while attempting this, she cut me off. Easily done, explained a second advisor, to whom I spoke after going through all that rigmarole a second time. It's the way the system is designed, the transfer and release mechanism is like a gearbox that tricks you into selecting reverse when you wanted 5th. Never mind, said operator number two, I'll take good care not to cut you off - and he didn't, in fact it happened several minutes later, just as a recorded announcement started to say for the nth time "We apol"… That was as far as it got: there was silence for a while, then the morose tone of "number unobtainable".

Never mind, thought I: let's try the internet. After all, I'd managed to update my gas and electricity direct debits by simply typing in a few details on the Eastern Energy web site. Perhaps BT would be just as accommodating. Not so, it transpired. You can fill in boxes to set up a direct debit in the first place, but not to update the details subsequently. So I used their customer response facility - and straightway received back a copy of my own e-mailed comments with a request that I investigate the matter and get in touch with myself at the earliest opportunity. Yes, you've guessed correctly: the BT system had referred my mail to an internal address that no longer existed and whose mailer bounced back the missive not only to the referrer but also to the originator.

I'm sorry, BT, if you feel hard done by as I report the unvarnished truth. I'm sure there are other call centres that are far worse than yours and other e-mail handlers that snarl things up just as thoroughly. Come to think of it, I recall a sad experience some months back with Virgin Mobile (why are my bad trips always with telco's?). They were clearly using some kind of dedicated

front-end processing system in order to generate automatic replies to e-mail. The software scans incoming mail for keywords and sends its best guess of a response. Reminiscent of "Eliza the intelligent therapist" (have I remembered that correctly?), who used to reside on many a university mainframe. "How are you?", the program would ask. "I'm feeling a bit grotty" you might answer, and in response the teletype would chatter "tell me more about grotty", and so on.

I've discovered that there are firms in the USA who write software that is designed to deal "intelligently" with incoming e-mails. I sent their flagship system several messages in an attempt to discover some means of ensuring that what you send gets read by a real human being. Was there a trigger word or words, I wondered. Or perhaps a certain number of re-submits with the same reference number might do the trick. Sadly I have to report my total failure. The system remained bright and breezy, but opaque to the last.

Is this the future? Will the rows and rows of operators be replaced by racks and racks of robotic mail handlers? I'm not sure that my blood pressure could stand that! Yet that is the way of the world. When I bought a ticket from one of London Underground's latest touch screen machines, it flashed back a stern rebuke: "You don't need to press quite so hard: a lighter touch is often more effective". I don't think I could take that too often.

Yet we, the Church, can often seem quite incomprehensible and impenetrable. People think they're doing us a favour by telephoning the minister on a Sunday or at mealtimes (sure to be at home!). Some "office hours" take place in vestries that are far from welcoming. The very thought of going to church to hear the banns read can be as terrifying as an invitation to a Christian minister to pop into the local betting shop one Saturday afternoon. In fact, there will always be someone ready to explain to a novice exactly how to place a bet, but it requires great courage to step over the threshold if you’re an outsider.

What sort of technologies can help the church office, the manse, presbytery or vicarage to present a welcoming face to the world? Databases are useful, especially if they can be linked to caller identity displays (although people can fool you by ringing from someone else's phone). However, it's difficult to keep down the noise of your fingers sliding over the keyboard as you quickly check up on the caller's history. Also there is a need to be restrained in the way we use information: callers who begin by saying "you won't remember me, but you baptised our first child four years ago" may smell a rat if we gaily respond "of course I remember you - tell me, how is your mother-in-law who had just broken her collar bone the week before, I believe?"

I've already mentioned caller identification, which most telco's provide for a small additional rental fee. The system varies from operator to operator, and not all display devices are fully compatible. Some have memories that can link numbers to names that you have stored beforehand; some have the facility to return the call at the touch of a button, and at the top of the range you can even see the identity of those being queued by the call waiting facility.

The new generation "dect" cordless phones enable you to set up a virtual switchboard with several handsets linked to a single base. Get a repeater device and you can double the distance between phone and base: 600 metres should be ample for most church sites with hall, manse and church building

proximity. You can also get a cordless extension box if you want to run a conventional phone off a cordless base station - or how about one of the latest gadgets that offers an instant extension by piggybacking on your household electricity ring main. Provided you keep clear of any filters or lightning arrestors, you should get a surprisingly clean connection - without drilling holes in walls or tacking cable to the skirting board.

If you want the full Monty, you can buy a home telephone exchange with digital answering machine for less than two hundred pounds. It will announce each caller by name or number, and you can set the ringing to start on one phone and gradually cascade onto others if the call goes unanswered. Different settings are available for night and day (you set the times for each, which you can always override, e.g. if you want to switch to night service when you go out). The system can handle up to six extensions, and each extension can have up to two instruments in tandem. Loudspeaker capability gives you the equivalent of a baby listening device. There is also an optional entry-intercom kit, which even provides for you to remotely answer your front door and let someone into the house. Rather bizarre, I would imagine, to be answered by the voice of someone who is not in the house but responding from their mobile!

There are other more practical features: for instance, the exchange can distinguish between normal ringing and the distinctive ring of a BT callsign number. So you could have a second number at minimal cost and use it as a "by-pass" when it's your day off; that way, calls on the ordinary number are soundlessly passed to the answering machine, while callers who have been given the alternative number still get though as normal. The system provides an alarm call facility and can manage ringback requests both internal and external. It cannot cope with external three-way calling, but you can always use a telephone instrument plugged into a socket "upstream" of your exchange in order to do this.

Incidentally, three-way calling is an excellent way of consulting two churchwardens, stewards, elders or deacons at the same time. It can also be used to pass on a call you have already answered: callers are usually impressed if having called the church office they are told "you need to be in touch with our hall bookings secretary; hold the line a moment please while I put you through".

But back to the Ultimate 106, which is the name of the home exchange of which I have been speaking. Among its many features it can play music to callers who have been put on hold. The built-in music is typically rather mindless, but you can plug in an external source and play (subject to copyright) CDs or tapes, hopefully more soothing than the BT stuff. There is a facility to enable callers to select the extension to which they want to speak, which is getting dangerously like the commercial systems that have annoyed me so much! Your recorded greeting could then in effect invite callers to press one for the family, two for the church office, or three to hear a recorded announcement about times of services, etc., You can, of course, get computer software that does much of this and more, but you might not want to have your computer set up permanently to auto-answer.

So now my plan of campaign is decided. If BT ever return my call, I'll say "all our agents are busy helping others who called earlier; you are being held in a queue; we do value your custom; please hold the line and one of our operators will be with you shortly; we are sorry for the extended delay; please make sure you have your 16-digit electoral roll identifier immediately to hand" as I select my most impenetrable track of "musique concrete" to play over and over and over…