by Bret Capranica | Jun 12, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology, Twitter
Should an ordinary pastor get involved in the latest social media extravaganza? Drawbacks and benefits abound. Like most things the devil isn’t in the device as much as in the one using it. To each his own, but here are five temptations to avoid and ten reasons why I use Twitter. Twitter Temptations 1. Narcissism. Twitter assumes not only that others care what you are doing, but that you should have a group of followers enamored with what you are doing. Who can know a person’s motives for Twittering, Facebooking, or involvement in any other social media. But if you lust for a following Twitter (or social media in general) may bring out the worst in you. 2. Wasting Time. This is obvious. If you have Twitter tools to interrupt you on your computer, or perhaps have it text you when someone sends you a Tweet, you can be continually interrupted, checking in and responding, that you will inevitably neglect the important issues of your life. 3. Too Much Info. Twitter is not a place for confrontation of sin or a place to air out your disgruntled feelings. Some tell us too much about what’s in their hearts. Not everything we think or feel needs to come out of our mouth or from our keyboards. 4. Not Enough Info. Some don’t say much when they Tweet. “Eating cereal” may be significant when you are an avid 140 character Twitter-bug, but if such is the sum and substance of your comments, it is hardly a benefit to anyone. 5. Avoiding the Face-to-Face. As with virtually all electronic media, it is...
by Bret Capranica | Jun 5, 2009 | Twitter
Checking the weather I’m Oceanside-Mom REALLY wants to go to the beach. Amarillo has lots of beach but very little water. # Home from a cloudy but fun day in Oceanside-c’mon, can it ever be a bad day in a city named OCEANside? # Prepping for a new Lord’s Day. Looking forward to the fellowship. # Headed to church. Worship, instruction, fellowship, evangelism-a great day ahead. # Enjoyed the morning-worship and fellowship-now for lunch with the family and maybe a quick nap-maybe. # Off to take parents to the airport-enjoyed the time with them sad to see them go. # At the office-flawless trip to San Diego and back-God is merciful. # Headed to the office for an early start. # 14 hour day in the office yesterday and I still feel behind. Time to rest my mind in the word and prayer before an even longer day today. # Up to read, pray, do sermon prep and fight off a slight sore throat. Got a few sick kids in the house also. Coffee should help everything. # Kicking back with the fam-what a full week it has been. I’m looking forward to our young adult retreat this weekend. # About to sit down and work on Sunday’s sermon, retreat stuff and return a pile of e-mail. # Powered by Twitter...
by Bret Capranica | May 29, 2009 | Twitter
Visited the Capuchin crypt at Savoca this morning: http://bit.ly/FucVD (via @Phil_Johnson_)-Catholicism at it’s best! in reply to Phil_Johnson_ # Time to set my mind on things above before engaging the day. # Weekly review and planning-one of the most important routines I have. # Time for Sermon Prep-crafting sermon outline, intro,conclusion, applications # RT: @productivity501: There are two different types of technology users. Are you Joey or Bill? http://bit.ly/12LitC # Time for lunch-almost finished with the sermon. Need a break for the brain. # Back to the sermon-almost finished writing. Trying to keep it under the 9 points I had last week-I cut this one to 8. # I preached too long last week-9 points, 23 pages of notes. I only have 8 points, but 26 pages of notes, what does that say? More revising. # Time to get ready for a Sunday School Fellowship-love it when a class gets together at a pizza joint!! “It’s the best!” (Nacho Libre). # Had a great time with the Peacemakers class tonight-now to play outside with the girls until I can’t deal with pink dolly stollers any more. # Ok-back to the study to finalize the sermon-need to make a few adjustments. # What to do when the sermon is too long? Make is longer-add more to it . . . and make it a 2 part series. # I stayed up way too late-a change is coming (has come)-change always seems to take a little time in adjusting-blogging on it Tuesaday # Headed to church-love the Lord’s Day and the Lord’s People. # Home from church and about to enjoy...
by Bret Capranica | May 28, 2009 | Featured Articles, Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Technology
It”™s time to stop living the lie that I”™ve been living. The struggle has been a drain on my conscience, especially since I have been living one way in secret, keeping even my wife in the dark (sort of). It”™s time to be honest ““ it”™s time to acknowledge not merely a radical change for me, but more of an acknowledgment of who I really am-who I”™ve always really been. I really can”™t keep it a secret anymore. I am a . . . Mac User! Three weeks ago, I bought my first iMac and have been living in both the PC and Mac world since. Two weeks of using both, I can say I”™ve been continually frustrated with my PC and continually satisfied using the Mac. Today that all ends. I have come out of the closet and embraced the Mac way of living. First, a little history. In college, I was a Mac user. My university had two computer labs: a PC lab that most of the students on campus used and a Mac lab in the music and art building. Since I was a music major for a year and half I regularly used a Mac. At that time (late 80s, early 90s), PCs were a drag to use. I wrote all my papers and even did a substantial amount of church work on Macs. However, as I moved into seminary, the world of Mac was simply not as compatible or suggested. So I became a Mac hater ““ why in the world would anyone own a Macintrash? Yet, secretly, I have always been attracted to...
by Bret Capranica | May 25, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
Here’s the last installment on the technology series: An area where I will be sticking with the paid versions is Groove. What, you don”™t know what Groove is? You need to. Groove is a collaboration software tool that comes in the new Office 07 suite. I can create multiple workspaces, invite who I want to them, assign permissions and begin sharing any sort of document with whomever I want (of course, they must also own and install Groove). If they make changes to the document, it synchronizes the doc for any who are a part of the workspace. You can even create files on your desktop to be “Grooved” and share those files with those you want so that you don”™t have to recreate or upload files to a separate workspace. The only problem with this is that the 64 bit version of Groove does not work with Vista and Microsoft has no plans to make it work. Go figure. This was a major bummer for me. For pastoral ministry this has become invaluable. Our pastoral team collaborates with one of our members who actually puts up a copy of the bulletin each week and we all add our two cents. I do this also with our Sunday School bulletin, PowerPoint presentations, and a vast array of documents I want to share with others. I looked into Zoho”™s Sharepoint-like site, but it simply was not as easy to use or set up. Groove has been a pleasure to use. What about note taking? When Office 07 came out I became hooked to One Note. However, I think the free...
