Joseph F. Radosevich

Church revitalization sounds like legalism on a church-wide scale. Legalism says, "Do this, and God will love you. If you don't do this, God won't love you." Most church revitalization training that I've heard sounds like this:  Your church will die.  Your church should die. You are not healthy. You must change. Your church can be good, healthy, thriving, etc. if you follow the list of rules. Be a good church, and you will be valuable. None of that sounds like New Testament prescriptions for the church. Even Jesus' harsh words in Revelation 3 have an invitation for people to come to him in v. 20: " If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,  I will come in  and eat with that person, and they with me." The Biblical pattern is Law-Gospel-Change. Much or most church revitalization has the pattern Law-Effort-Change. I wonder what church revitalization with gospel motivations might produce. J.C. Ryle said,  All want to see among Christians more good wor...

I read an Axios newsletter every morning, and one article is usually about Artificial Intelligence. I skim or skip those articles. I cannot believe that something earth-shattering in the world of AI happens every morning. I've written a bit about having a AI-proof ministry here . Even though I'm over AI, it's inescapable. I can't help thinking about it. Here are three things I don't think pastors can get from AI: Skill. Part of pastoring is the skill of ministering in the moment to people. If someone offloads the thinking of ministry to a computer, they will get exposed when someone needs them to minister to them without their computer in front of them or their phone out. When the helicopter transporting an injured loved one takes off, you won't have time to look at your phone for instructions. When you are trying to figure out how to respond during a conflict with church leaders, you can't look it up and ask for help. If you give your ministry thinking to a...

I would talk about myself all the time if given the chance. It's vanity, and I hate it. One way that I fight that is to ask good questions of other people. I ask questions at our family meals. I try to think in advance of questions to ask friends when we get coffee or acquaintances when I go out to a lunch for pastors. I like to think of questions to ask at our dinner table or when I am meeting with friends or new acquaintances. I want them to be really good questions and not goofy youth group icebreakers. Here are a few that spark good conversations: What are you excited about? This could be about work or family or hobbies.  What are you working on? What problem are you working on? What from your previous career makes you better at your current job? I asked a new friend who had been a newspaper editor how his time as a journalist made him a better pastor. That sparked a great conversation and  he told some interesting stories. What are you learning or enjoying about Christ? I...

I keep a notebook where I write quotes that I want to remember and return to. I write down what I like. Sometimes I pick them because they are funny, beautiful, stirring, or encouraging. This notebook encourages me and helps me remember the books that I read. I didn't intend it for writing material or quotes for sermons, but it helps from time to time. It mostly encourages me. When I'm down or discouraged, I read it. Writing the quotes can be a bit tedious, but it is well-worth it when I see those quotes a couple of years later.

Robert Caro is everywhere right now. I hear him mentioned on podcasts. I see his name in William Zinsser's book Writing to Learn .  Why is he everywhere? I might just notice him everywhere because I've been reading his books. I once started noticing Hondas when I had a Honda Accord. Now that we drive Toyotas, I see them everywhere. It could be the same with Robert Caro, but I suspect that it is his excellence. His excellence makes him relevant. I've read four of Robert Caro's books. That is around 2500 pages. I have two more by my nightstand right now. What makes Robert Caro so excellent? First, he gets information that nobody else gets. He goes to lengths that nobody else will go to. He talks about running the route from Lyndon Johnson's apartment to the Capitol building at the exact time of day Johnson would have run it so he could see what he saw. Caro went for a season to live in Central Texas so he could understand how the people lived. He tracked down people o...

I heard an interview recently with an author with a unique name. She downplayed it and acted like it was a challenge for people to find her books because of her last name. She told people to search for the name of her book instead of her name online. She’s not the only person who thinks their name is a challenge. I know of a singer-songwriter with a Czech last name who goes by his middle name. I think he goes from being a unique singer-songwriter to a common one. A common name can get you confused with so many others with that name. I follow a fitness writer named Pat Flynn. The problem with looking for Pat Flynn’s writing, books, podcast, and videos is that there is a more popular Pat Flynn who writes about business and finance. I have to add “kettlebell” if I ever search for something, or I get the wrong results. In the age of Google, having a unique name is a superpower because people can find you easily. Google means that you can misspell my last name but if you get it in the ballp...

Dave was a good friend that died of cancer last year. He was in an out of the hospital. When he was home, he was often too sick to attend church. He helped me, though. No matter where he was, he would listen to our Sunday morning sermon. He started listening back through the archive when he got really sick. He also went back and listened to our Sunday evening recordings as well. Whenever he thought that a sermon would bless others, Dave told me to save that sermon and use it again. I preach 100 times a year at our church. I occasionally preach in other places too such as a college group, chapel service, denominational meeting, etc. I don't have time to prepare an entirely new sermon on top of what I do for our church. Dave helped me be wise with my time. Dave also helped me because I don't know when a sermon is very good or helpful. I'm not a good judge of my sermons. My wife and kids are encouragements to me and don't need the burden of critiquing me. Dave helped me me...

I made up a church metric several years ago. It's very simple. It is church giving divided by average attendance.  I came up with it during a brag session by a megachurch pastor. I took their giving and attendance and realized immediately that they receive and spend twice as much per person as our church plant did.  As an example. I took the numbers from a leading Southern Baptist church with publicly available data. Their church efficiency number is $3541. That is they receive and spend $3541 for every person in their average attendance. Manchester Baptist, where I pastor, is very average both in giving and attendance. Our church efficiency number is $1934. The metric is mostly useful for church planting discussions. I care about two things: faithful churches and having a church in every community so that every person can hear. I grew up in large churches. I have pastored smaller churches. Faithful churches can come in all kinds of sizes. We should, however, be concerned if t...

I learned my first gardening lesson when I was around 12 or 13 years old.  My mom read a book on growing a no-work garden and sent my older brother and I out to to the back of our new 1-acre yard to start a no-work garden. Our long-time joke was that no-work garden just means have other people do it for you. We prepped the ground which was a mixture of sand and clay and planted squash, watermelon, and who-knows-what else. Then we mulched the whole garden with an extremely thick layer of straw. The garden was amazing. The plan really was ingenious because the mulch did keep weeds down and keep the soil moist. We didn't have to do much work after planting. We tried it again the next year and the garden struggled. Someone heard about our problem and said, "it's the soil. Your garden used up all the nutrients the first year. You've got to replace them." Those were my first and probably best lessons in the garden.  Protect the soil with mulch. Keep moisture in so you h...

When I was in seminary, I took a class on Francis Schaeffer and C.S Lewis. We read everything that each of them wrote. The only thing that I didn't finish was Lewis' Space Trilogy . I only read the first of that series. I included my kids in what I was learning at school so I read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to them that semester. The morning that I read them the chapter where *spoiler* Aslan dies, I read that chapter and then left my wife with crying kids to go to work. My wife was not happy. I let the kids stay up before bed that night to finish the book. I think they cried again. That was an amazing semester because I read and discussed so many great books and ideas. One lesson from that class was the value of reading everything that an author has written. That is a great goal for your reading. You don't have to read them all in a year. Read them all in 5 years. I've done that with favorite authors in fiction or history. I read everything I can by Daniel S...

Is God mad at you if your church doesn't grow right now? If church attendance doesn't climb or goes backward, how does God feel about you? If you have to reduce the number of kids classes because the children in your church are growing up and no one replaces them, what does God think? Is God's dream for you and your church growth or nothing? There are many reasons you could be in this situation. You might be compromising on doctrine. Or your community could be shrinking. You might be unfaithful to do evangelism and discipleship. Or there is a waiting period between your faithfulness and your fruitfulness. I don't know why your church is struggling. Here is one thing that I do know, God wants to do something in you and not just through you. Pastor, God is working on you and that is work that God thinks is worth doing. In a writing lecture Brandon Sanderson gave to a Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy college course, he explained that writing fiction is worth doing even ...

I heard in a recent interview on the Decoder with Nilay Patel podcast about students letting AI write all their code in a computer class. If a computer can write all your code, then you won't be needed.  I look at my to-do list on occasion to see if AI could replace the things that I'm doing. If an AI chatbot could do the work that I am doing as a pastor, then I should stop doing those things and figure out what and how to pastor in a way that computers cannot replace. Computers cannot  Look people in the eyes. Know the stories of the people that you preach to. Customize the sermon to the people in your congregation and their temptations and worries. Have a special handshake with kids in the church. Pray alone or with the deacons. Put a hand on someone's shoulder and pray for their specific need. Be transformed by the Bible passage that you will preach. Preach with the Holy Spirit's power. Follow-up the sermon with a handshake and personal greeting. Sit on the porch an...

This floored me when I read it yesterday and had to write it in my quote journal. Four Locations in a Pastor's Life: You live in a dramatically fallen world. The big battle is fought in your heart. You will run somewhere for refuge. Where you are heading, trouble will be no more. Dangerous Calling Paul David Tripp

I thought I had outgrown my largest kettlebells a couple of months ago. I made plans to buy a larger one. It's kind of a good problem to have, but it is an expensive problem. I delayed buying one and discovered that I don't have to have a bigger one just yet. I was using Pat Flynn's strength-focused training plan in his book Strong On! I got stronger so that my largest kettlebells weren't challenging enough. When I decided to delay buying a bigger kettlebell (at my wife's urging), I tried another plan from his book focused on building muscle. Otherwise, I would have skipped that plan. Because the rep ranges are different, I couldn't use my largest bells and had to go down a couple of levels. Now, I'm getting a ton out of my medium-sized bells.  The training plans in the book are called Strength, Muscle, Conditioning/Fat Loss, and Mobility. There are workouts each week from each category, but the emphasis changes. You use the lowest reps and heaviest weight ...

At my conference last month, Dr. Hershael York warned against using bad Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic word studies in sermons. His lesser point was to preach simple sermons that highlight the bible and not the preacher. He encouraged us to trust the Bible and not our cleverness. I've been thinking about that advice and what that means. It means telling the structure of the sermon during the sermon. This is probably my biggest piece of advice for all preachers. Your sermon will improve if you make your outline obvious. I never resent a preacher making point or outline too obvious. I do get bored or confused when I have no idea what the point is or where we are in the sermon. This applies to teachers as well. Make your outline obvious so that people can hang your explanations, illustrations, and applications on the structure of the lesson.