Bishop Haywood Parker loves feeling connected.

Whether he is in his office, his sanctuary, his home or an airport terminal, the senior pastor of Truth Tabernacle Ministries in Rocky Mount knows he only is a few taps away from his duties.

In the year since he bought his iPad, Parker said he has become so dependent on it that he rarely can be found without it. He uses it to take notes, research sermons, send emails and organize his schedule so he has more time for prayer, visitations and other duties. When he steps in front of his congregation on Sunday mornings, he is preaching from his iPad.

“Almost all of my associating pastors and friends have iPads. They preach from their iPads. They have Logos software and programs that make the Bible readily available, make research readily available. There are very few friends I have in the pastorate that do not function on that level,” Parker said.

Churches historically have been behind the times with technology, but that quickly is changing, said Frank Chiapperino, creator of techpastor.net, a website that educates pastors on how to use technology to enhance their ministries. An increasing number of pastors are embracing resources such as smartphones, tablets, websites, podcasts, apps, texting and Facebook as necessities to reach people rather than as something fun to try.

Though the average church in the United States still has less than 100 members, the ones growing most rapidly often have realized the added level of connection that technology brings, Chiapperino said. As a result, those churches are more effective in reaching new people, communicating with their congregations and helping to make an impact in their cities.

“There is a growing trend in communication that you’ll get a quicker response from a text message than you will from an email. The next level is you will get a quicker response from Facebook than you will email. If you make a phone call, you might not get an answer back for a day or two,” Chiapperino said.

That sense of immediacy can help a pastor who wants to show his congregation that the gospel is relevant in everyday life, said the Rev. Scott White, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rocky Mount. When he is reading a news story or sees something he thinks could be used in a sermon, he records it in his iPad and iPhone. He has a program that lets him search for a citation in the Bible and pull it up in four or five different translations, including the original Greek or Hebrew, giving him greater understanding of what it means.

“Our mission is to open up understanding of the Scripture and to assist others in that. Our mission is not to hold onto the information, our mission is to share it. We are serving as interpreters, and this helps us to do it better. It helps us to preach. It helps us to engage with the people who we are serving,” White said.

The Rev. James Gailliard, senior pastor of Word Tabernacle Church, had no problem embracing technology. About 75 percent of his sermon preparation is done electronically since he has acquired most of his existing library as ebooks. Instead of being limited to resources on hand, he has access to thousands of books and articles on his iPad no matter where he is.

Whether it is a wedding, funeral, sermon or Bible study, everything except Gailliard’s Bible is stored and accessed electronically. The church’s services and Bible studies are accessible on the Internet through live webcasts or podcasts that can be downloaded on iTunes.

“We already have a cyber church community. It is not a large community, but on any given Sunday or Bible study, we will have between 60 and 80 people in our cyber church watching the service and interacting and responding,” Gailliard said.

If there is resistance to pastors growing more tech savvy, often it is because of tradition rather than function, Chiapperino said. Some people want the service and music to always stay the same and the pastor to read from a big Bible, not an electronic tablet. He understands the feeling, even if he doesn’t always agree with it.

“The word of God is the word of God whether it is on a digital page or a paper page. It is the same, and those words speak truth no matter what format they are written on. What it boils down to is God is bigger than a book and he is bigger than a digital book. His truth supersedes all formats,” Chiapperino said.

Parker said his congregation not only has been open to his techie ways, but many of them bring iPads to church, too.

“I made the comment the other day we need to get back to using the Bible again because a lot of our people now have the Bible on their cell phones or iPads. You see a lot more of that in the congregation than what you used to. ... Sometimes it is good, and sometimes I am thinking, ‘Are they really looking at the Bible or are they checking text messages?’” Parker said with a laugh.