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...
by Bret Capranica | May 23, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
More on my wrap up of Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor Excel is a tool I regularly use, especially since I oversee our church”™s finances. The ability to quickly create charts and graphs in Word and extensively manipulate them to fit your desired look and express your information as you desire is easy. Word has vastly improved the styles of their charts and graphs, adding more 3D effects and sharper colors and backgrounds. Numbers is the Mac version, and it simply produces a better-looking product than does Excel and is very easy to use. I”™m no Excel power user, but what I do with it was not as easy to accomplish in the OpenOffice platform. Let me say a word about PowerPoint. I used to despise PowerPoint. They have the WORST looking templates. Another area Microsoft just simply does not do well in ““ really professional, modern, crisp, clean, sharp presentations. PowerPoint 07 is a great improvement over previous versions. I do a PPT presentation almost every week that I teach my mid-week class. OpenOffice is a joke. I also extensively tried out the free (and the paid versions) of Sliderocket. Sliderocket has some real potential, but was so buggy that it created some major headaches for me. I also called their customer support for help because once it was out of beta, I couldn”™t seem to get anyone to respond via e-mail. The guy was awesome on the phone and assured me that someone would follow up with my problems ““ I have yet to hear from them. While it still irks me that PowerPoint is so...
by Bret Capranica | May 22, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
I”™m going to wrap up (belatedly) my little series on pastoral ministry and the quest for inexpensive technology. Honestly, this is not really an issue for some pastors (or others). Some are in the position where expense is not really an issue. Or they are willing to forgo something else in order to have the better technology. After evaluating the free side of life, I think it is worth spending some money in order to have the better technology and thus a more productive time accomplishing what you do and yet there are a few apps. Let me start with productivity suites. Word Processing, Number Crunching and Presentations. Hands down, MS Office: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are your best bets (all of these in the world of PC). For a basic suite, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (more on this one later), you”™ll pay about $150.00. If you are a student, you can get the Ultimate Office suite for about $60.00. That”™s really the way to go for the power and ease of use you will gain over the zero-priced material like OpenOffice.org. Why pay the money for these? Word is the universal powerhouse of word processing. Other programs, including WordPerfect and Pages with the Mac, have to adjust to it. It is the standard platform. Office has become much more user friendly. Though it did take me awhile to adjust to the new ribbon format, the UI is much cleaner, easier to use, faster to navigate, and even pleasing to the eyes. As said before, OpenOffice reminds me of Windows 98. In Word (Excel, PowerPoint) you can...
![Delays, Changes and Updates]()
by Bret Capranica | May 4, 2009 | Personal
I was doing so well ““ that is blogging much more regularly. However, the past three weeks have been a most busy time at the Capranica Villa. In addition to a week of vacation, the rigors of normal ministry and family life, we have had little added activity around here. I changed over [well, really my good friend Chad did the heavy lifting] THE CAPRANICA to its own domain name. There is still a bit to do to get everything working perfectly, but it is done and I’m very pleased with it. WordPress is such a great blogging platform. I also taught a seminar recently at our Association’s Equipped for Excellence Sunday School conference. The seminar was entitled, “How to Plan the Work of Your Church” (it was assigned to me). I enjoyed the prep for this five hour workshop. We discussed how to effectively implement your philosophy of ministry, organize around it and execute it well. I don’t think I do this as well as I like, but I thoroughly enjoyed the preparation, teaching, and discussion ““ and it is an area for constant personal and ministry growth. In order to be finished on time with the 50 page handout for 30 people, the power-point and my notes, I had to pull an all-nighter-I don’t do these as well as I used to and the effects tend to linger a bit longer. I’ve also begun teaching a new class at church on Baptist History and Theology. This has been a great time of study and review for me ““ reminding me of the biblical nature and the historical...
by Bret Capranica | Apr 21, 2009 | Pastoral Ministry
John Piper’s comments to his pastoral staff is excellent stuff! What I Said to the Pastoral Staff About Unity Amid Differences :: Desiring...
