Joseph F. Radosevich

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 entire 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 f...

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.

I traveled to Louisville last weekend for the Greek and Hebrew for Life Conference hosted at my alma mater, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They do conferences called Southern Academy for alums and friends. This is the second time they've done Greek and Hebrew for Life. Here are a few thoughts: I appreciated that they focused on using biblical languages in ministry and devotion. Ultimately, ministry should come from devotion and lead to devotion. Dr. Betts' breakout on Hebrew noun morphology was amazing and changed my life. Other students in the class were blown away too. I went to his next breakout on verb morphology, and it was such a help too. A student in that class also was exclaiming about how his explanations made so much sense. The best place to learn Hebrew right now is probably Boyce College with Dr. Adam Howell. What he's doing is incredible by combining morphology, reading the Old Testament, hearing, speaking, and reading. It is so good. I loved being...

This last Sunday, I finished praying through the Psalms during our church's Sunday morning service. Every week, I pray a pastoral prayer. I usually pray through a Psalm as a way to keep my prayers fresh. I use the language and themes as inspiration and pray them for our church, community, and world. Most people don't know that I'm praying a specific passage. I've only mentioned it to a few people. I started praying through the Psalms over 3 years ago instead of finding a Scripture to pray each week. I know that it took over 3 years because sometimes I have been gone, other Sundays I pray something else that is on my heart, and I prayed each stanza  of Psalm 119 on separate Sundays (that's 22).

Fiction Leave It to Psmith , P.G. Wodehouse. This is such a funny book. Wodehouse is a master at storytelling and writing.  Miss Buncle's Book , D.E. Stevenson. Emma recommended both of these fiction books. This is a fun, sweet, well-told story about a woman who wrote a book about the people in her town. They find out, and their lives (and her life ) are turned upside down. Non-Fiction The Air We Breathe , Glen Scrivener. This won several awards a few years ago, so I grabbed it when I saw it on a free rack. It is so good about how the world we live in is shaped by Jesus. It's written mostly for those who reject Christianity, but it bolstered my faith and reminded and taught me how world-changing Jesus is. 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden , Carolyn Male. Tomatoes are my hobby. I loved this. I learned a few things but mostly just enjoy hearing how other tomato enthusiasts garden. Current Reading Knowing Christ , Mark Jones. I've had tears in my eyes twice this we...

I read a couple of blogs that show their harvest every Monday and describe conditions and varieties. I can't do a Monday post each week, but I thought I'd share 3 varieties of veggies and flowers from our garden in June.  Top left is Fiesta Time hollyhocks . They are shorter than normal varieties because they top out at 4 feet. I love it because they look like little pink fireworks from across the backyard. The lower leaves at the base are pretty ugly, so I have a some palm sedge that I hope fills that in and makes it prettier. Top right is National Pickling cucumbers . I love this variety because it produces tons of blocky cukes intended for pickles. You can eat them fresh, but we have another variety for that. We usually have to throw away some cukes every year because we get so many. We may sell these at the farmer's market near here later in the year. Last year, Emma told me to pull up the plants early because she was sick of all the cukes and had made enough pickles to...

When I'm looking for garden info, I use a Google search trick to weed through all the bad information out there.  type "site:.edu" and then the search terms. Example: "site:.edu how to prune peppers for better yield". The .edu limitation means that I only get results from university-based websites, and this usually means university extension centers. The internet is loaded with bad information--especially in the gardening world. AI is creeping into everything and whole sites are written by AI bots to trick people into listening to them. Searching just anywhere might end up showing you bad information and advice.  You can use this trick when searching to limit the results to a top level domain like I did in the example above, but you can also use it to limit your searches to a specific website or series of websites.  We're all going to need to learn how to use our technology better to stay a step ahead of scammers and bad actors.

  I published a new article on worship leadership and planning in smaller churches. It is called 5 Guidelines for Leading Worship in a Smaller Church . Equipthecalled.com is a website of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and they asked for submissions that fit what and how I write. One connection is that my dad graduated from SWBTS and I attended for 3 semesters. I wrote it in April, but it took a while to publish.  Worship leadership is a major challenge for smaller churches and the pastors that I have talked to. I hope that this helps.