by Bret Capranica | May 7, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
The Lord’s Day is my favorite and most exhausting day of the week: 3:00 a.m. Awoke to shower and dress, with one major change – Brie woke up and was ready to eat. She has been sleeping until 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. but not this morning. So I fed her, had her changed and back in bed asleep by 3:30 a.m. 3:30 a.m. Showered and dressed. 4:00 a.m. Devotional Time 5:00 a.m. Prepared for leading the music Sunday morning and finalized preparations for teaching my Sunday School Class. 5:30 a.m. Worked on my sermon manuscript for preaching Sunday PM. 7:00 a.m. Finished dressing and preparing to leave 7:20 a.m. Left for church 7:30 a.m. Rehearsal with our instrumentalists 8:00 a.m. Rehearsal with our choir 8:15 a.m. First Worship Service. I lead the music which included leading our choir in an anthem. 9:45 a.m. Sunday School class. I lead a group of young adults in a dialogue teaching format. We discussed how to Study the Bible inductively as we prepare to launch into a new inductive study of Genesis. 10:30 a.m. Prepared choir for our Second Worship Service 10:45 a.m. Second Worship Service. Our two morning services are identical in format. The service ended this morning about 10 minutes after noon. I stayed to talk with people after the service until almost 1:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. Back at home – had lunch with a young couple from our church. 3:30 p.m. In my study, I caught up on the day’s news and a few blog headlines. I then began finalizing my sermon manuscript and preparing for the evening service....
by Bret Capranica | May 5, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
I tried to stay away from both my phone and my computer on Friday, so I did not post yesterday. I finish this evening, thinking back on the past few days. Thursday: 4:00 a.m. Up to shower and dress about an hour later than I planned. I don’t do well to get up on time if I go to bed too late. 4:30 a.m. My devotional Time. 5:30 a.m. Because I have a meeting at 8:00 a.m., I took the time to accomplish a number of normal tasks I knew I would be unable to do. I spent about 20 minutes doing some filing in my home office, reading, writing a memo I will use next week for a short meeting with Sunday School secretaries, sending a few tasks to our receptionist via e-mail, responding to e-mail, reviewing material for my first meeting of the day and I wrote a few notes to some in our church I had been praying for. 7:30 a.m. Kelly was up with Brie to feed her, so we did not have our time of reading together. I finished packing to leave for the office. 8:00 a.m. Meeting with two of our pastors regarding our Ministry Action Plans for 2008. We had a lively and very helpful discussion regarding how we will be developing and overseeing ministry next year. 10:00 a.m. Spent time reviewing and preparing for a number of financial issues, responded to e-mail, had a few phone calls and did some basic “next item” work on a number of projects. 12:00 p.m. At the gym to work out. 1:00 p.m. At home...
by Bret Capranica | May 3, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday are major study days for me. So here’s “tick-tock” for yesterday, Wednesday, May 2. 3:00 a.m. Awoke to shower an dress for the day 3:30 a.m. Devotional Time in my home study 3:45 a.m. Brie woke up and was ready to eat. This was a bit unexpected. She has been sleeping until around 6:00 a.m. but she did go to bed pretty early the night before, so my Devotional time was put off a bit to feed the little bundle. She was waiting for me with a huge smile, excitedly kicking, waiting to be fed. Sleep was not really on her schedule for this morning. She decided to stay awake and be fussy and playful and talkative to the tune of about an hour. She finally calmed down and I could put her back down without having to get up again too soon. 4:45 a.m. Back to Devotional Time 5:45 a.m. Checked a number of blogs and news stories 6:00 a.m. I had scheduled to do some work on my DMin project, however, I really need more than an hour to be effective with it. So, I spent the hour reading from Believer’s Baptism by Schreiner and Wright, a book I have been wanting to finish soon. I almost finished the book. 7:00 a.m. Breakfast with Kelly and spent time reading from Piper’s book, God is the Gospel. 7:45 a.m. Finished preparing to leave for work, and headed to make a visit at a convalescent home before heading to the office. 8:00 a.m. Visit at convalescent home with one of our members who will not...
by Bret Capranica | May 2, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
Tuesday is generally a day I devote to administrative issues. Because one of the areas of oversight I have on our team is the church’s finances, much of the time I spend revolves around making sure our records are kept up and are accurate – especially at the beginning of a new month, as I close out the previous month and prepare a detailed account of our finances to present to the congregation. So, here’s the ‘tick-tock’ of this average pastor’s average Tuesday: 3:00 a.m. Awoke to shower and dress for the day. 3:30 a.m. Devotional Time in my home study. 4:30 a.m. Began work on my sermon for Sunday. I spent time translating Romans 5:15-17 and put together a block diagram of the text and spent time observing parallel and contrasting phrases in the text. I then put together a rough exegetical outline of the text and formatted my exegetical notes to begin lexical and syntactical work tomorrow. 6:00 a.m. Our daughter, Brie, awoke. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, I take feeding duty in the morning. What a joy. I heard her making her typical ‘waking-up’ sounds and went in to check on her and she greeted me with a big smile, wide awake, ready to eat. So I prepared her bottle, fed and changed her. 6:30 am. Kelly was up by the time we finished and took Brie with her while I finished a few more thoughts in my sermon study. 7:00 a.m. Kelly and I had breakfast together and spent time reading together from John Piper’s book, God is the Gospel. We then prayed together...
by Bret Capranica | May 1, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
What does a pastor do all day (and night, sometimes)? As a means of answering this question for those who know little about, would like to know more of the average life of a pastor and as a way for me to scrutinize my time (at least for one week of the year), I am going to chronicle just exactly what goes on in an average week in my (a very average pastor) life. I really have no other aim than reflecting the various issues that crop us, time it takes to prepare a sermon, how home and family work at The Capranica Villa. I’m open to rebuke and hints that might help me be more effective in my use of time and process of ministry (maybe the first is to quit blogging – but read Steve Weaver’s posts first). My format for these posts will be to review, in a ‘tick-tock’ fashion, the previous day and compare it to what I had planned. It should be a good (perhaps quite bland) evaluation of God’s providence as well as my penchant for trying to do too much and accomplishing too little. So, here’s a quick review of how Monday, April 30 ended up in the life of this very average pastor: 6:30 a.m. Awoke to prepare for the day (shower, dress, etc). 7:00 a.m. Devotional Time in my home study. Currently, my devotional time consists of reading for about 15 minutes from a particular non-biblical book (John Owen currently), then I follow a one year Bible reading plan where I read through a portion of the Old Testament and...
by Bret Capranica | Apr 11, 2007 | Personal
So, we’re being very successful at doing very little but resting and enjoying one another and God’s good creation. We found a nice little spot at Capistrano Beach cleverly called the Capistrano Beach Resort. It’s not the newest facility and shows a little wear and tear, but as for the view from our second floor junior suite – it’s pretty fantastic and VERY relaxing. The hotel is a short walk from a good Italian restaurant we ate at last night and from a Mexican food place we’ll try out today. We seem to be in somewhat of a rut when it comes to eating. We’ve had Mexican for lunch each day and Italian for dinner each night. I suppose some may call that a rut – I tend to think of it as heavenly. Last night we took a short stroll from our hotel down to the beach where the waves are swelling and capping at around six to seven feet. I wish it were possible to capture on film what we are seeing. Today the weather reports say the waves should get to anywhere from 10 to 15 feet. It is a tad breezy here – but sunny and the temps are great (at least for me -Kel prefers 105 in August in Palm Springs) – mid sixties to low 70s. I only mention the temps for the sake of my mom and dad who I hear had some snow on Easter Sunday. Wish they were here with us. Our little one is doing so very well. We took her out for a stroll on the beach and...
