by Bret Capranica | Sep 19, 2016 | Featured Articles, Personal
Here are a few articles that I read, found interesting, noted and filed this week – which could be worth your own interest. When Having Black, Rotting Teeth Was Cool: 10 Bizarre Status Symbols from the Past These are great little tidbits of old indulgences. Rotting teeth – and sixteenth century follies. You’re life won’t change by reading about them – but they are interesting (and probably sermon illustration-worthy) in the future. White House Women Want to Be in the Room Where It Happens While the article traces how women are becoming more essential in how the White House functions, it also shows the inevitable world-view clash between the value motherhood and pursuing a career. Scripture is not silent on all of this and trying to be politically powerful and domestically influential will clash every time. Where Are the Happiest Europeans? Not in big cities, survey says. Major European cities, often cited for the joy of their progressive ways, are the cities with the least satisfied people. Go to the smaller provincial cities to find people satisfied with life. Perhaps a noted gospel opportunity. The gospel can flourish where society is significantly broken. The Uses of Patriotism David Brooks directs his appeal to high school football players, appealing to them to see the value of honoring their country during the the playing of the national anthem, even if and when they are struggling with its moral compass. While I can’t see a lot of high school football players interacting with Brooks’ NYT’s opinion piece, it’s worth the read in this present debate. What San Francisco Says About America The utopia...
by Bret Capranica | Feb 26, 2014 | Personal
Last week I listed a number of quotations from Scott M Manetsch’s book, Calvin’s Company of Pastors on ministry and life during and just after John Calvin’s life. Here are a few more on the subject of how preaching was practiced and received in Geneva during the era of the Reformation: The Ministry of the Word …the pulpit stood at the epicenter of controversy and change in reformed Geneva. In the minds of Geneva’s ministers, the proclamation of the Scripture was God’s dynamic instrument for bringing about personal spiritual regeneration, the reformation of the church, and the transformation of society according to the righteousness of Christ. 146 Preaching in Calvin’s Geneva What was noteworthy . . . was not that Protestant leaders like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin championed Christian preaching per se, but that they viewed the proclamation of the Word of God as the minister’s primary duty and restructured parish life in view of this priority. 148 The Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) envisioned that a pastoral staff of five men and three assistants would preach at least twenty sermons in the city each week. 148 The preacher was not the proprietor of a pulpit or the captain of his congregation: it was Christ who presided over his church through the Word. At least in theory, ministers of the Christian gospel were interchangeable. 150 For most of his career in Geneva, Calvin preached once or twice on Sundays, and every day of the week on alternate weeks, a schedule that demanded around eighteen to twenty sermons per month, or two hundred fifty sermons per year. In all, Calvin probably...
by Bret Capranica | Sep 13, 2013 | Personal
Here’s a few shots from what we think was one of our best family vacations yet: New Orleans, LA; Santa Rosa, FL; Franklin, TN; St. Louis, MO.
by Bret Capranica | Sep 3, 2013 | Blogging, Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Personal
Another re-post from over 4 years ago. I post it again as THE CAPRANICA re-launches its regularity as a reminder of what this blog is about. I am an ordinary pastor. That is, I know myself well enough and I have been around enough extraordinary pastors to be well aware of how ordinary I am. The content, regularity, and writing style found here at THE CAPRANICA all document the degree of my ordinariness. Actually, I enjoy being ordinary. Obscurity is often bliss. Normality, more often than not, is a blessing. The front-lines of the ordinary contain enough excitement, challenge, heartache, and doldrum to keep me focused and engaged in the Lord’s work. I have been an ordinary pastor for over 20 years (I began ministry in 1988 in a rural Texas Panhandle church) and I have never been bored with ministry; I’ve always been busy, and I’m as excited today about serving the church as I was twenty years ago when I began. I really do enjoy being among the ordinary. Ordinary is not often publicly celebrated, but ordinary pastors dominate the landscape of church life across our country; we are, by far, the vast majority. In reality, only a small percentage of pastors in the world could really be called or evaluated as extraordinary. I thank God for many of them . The Savior has used (and still does) a few of them in many influential ways in my life and ministry. Yet, most of us who serve the Lord as local church shepherds will not host presidential forums; books will not host our names as authors; national...
by Bret Capranica | Aug 27, 2013 | Blogging, Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Personal
For many months now I’ve been wanting to take up contributing to my neglected blog presence. As the mayhem begins again, I start with a re-post (from over 4 years ago) of an article on why an ordinary pastor, like me, should regularly blog. Wouldn’t blogging be persona non grata in the life of the truly ordinary pastor? Maybe a few years ago, but no longer. I would suspect that the majority of pastors blogging today are among the ordinary variety. It helps that more than 99% of the pastors in our country are ordinarily flavored, so you would expect that the same percentage of pastors blogging will be ordinary pastors. With that in mind, why should a pastor blog? I wish more extraordinary pastors blogged – I mean really blogged. Not like those guys who have their staff post excerpts from their books. I wish they would actually take a half-hour each day and write something about their life, ministry, personal discipline, reading habits, family life, and the very unique experiences they have in ministry. It’s good to hear from some of the extraordinary guys who share from the overflow of their vast amount of time in the Scriptures and years of experience. But I also like hearing from the average Joe. In fact, I think there are a host of reasons why an ordinary pastor should blog. Here’s my list: It humanizes the ministry, allowing people to see the past the ivory tower facade. It allows you to speak to issues you could not cover in your sermon (even though your sermon was too long already). It gives another...
