Joseph F. Radosevich

One of my new year's goals was to practice playing the cajon for 20 hours this year. I finished in May. Here's what, why, and how it went. I have always loved drums, but I never learned. I never had a set around to practice on or books, videos, or drumming teachers. I did learn to play the guitar, but I have always preferred drum/percussion. My favorite drum sounds are from drumming on a 5 gallon bucket and from the cajon. The cajon is a wooden box with snare drum strings behind the front panel. The sound it makes changes depending on where and how you hit it. There are three basic sounds that it can make. I saw this TED talk last year from Josh Kaufman on how it only take 20 hours of deliberate practice to learn any skill to a competent level. He wrote a book on the same topic: The First 20 Hours. He argues that most of us aren't aiming to be world class which might take 10,000 hours. He gave a few guidelines such as identifying the most important skills involved and prio...

I turn 42 this Friday. I still remember celebrating my 13th birthday at Dairy Queen and being disappointed that the kids menu was no longer for me. I've always liked my birthday, but hated getting older.  I've been thinking about health and fitness again this year. I've written many times about the struggle that pastors and their wives face with weight and health. The constant stress that pastors live with is indistinguishable to your body from physical stress, and I believe that makes the body store fat and refuse to let go of it. This year has been a challenge for this pastor as I turn the corner to middle age. Neither elbow will forgive me for doing pull-ups anymore. My knees can be gimpy if I'm not careful during heavy squats. I've gained 20 lbs over the last 3 years while I've averaged 4 or more workouts per week those 3 years. I've tried all sorts of diet restrictions and workout plans. My weight has crept up very slowly (just .12 lbs per week), but I...

I first read Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book  25 years ago. I was finishing high school, and I returned to it occasionally for the book list in the back or to revisit some section. I thought I understood it and even used the reading principles. I hadn't reread the whole thing though. I reread most of it this spring and realized how much I misunderstood. I was seventeen the first time I read the book; I actually read it twice that year and took extensive notes in the front and back pages-my attempt to practice their method. I just hadn't read it enough. I didn't know enough. I also missed the section on the aims of reading. Adler and Van Doren are known for their levels of reading. Their aims for reading are the critical part, but it's a short section that is easy to miss.  Levels Elementary-simple reading straight through. Inspectional-15 minutes of systematic skimming to get the gist of the book. Analytical -careful reading with analysis a...

I usually do these in bullet form. I'm going to try this in paragraph form today. We've been watching the World Cup for the last two weeks. The knockout stages are the most fun. I picked Ivory Coast to win. Most of our family want a country outside of Europe or South America to win. Only Europeans and South Americans have ever won it. I finished 3 books this month.  Man of Sorrows, King of Glory by Jonty Rhodes is a great book on the person, natures, offices, and work of Christ the Son. He organized it around the humiliation of Christ (taking on humanity) and the exaltation of Christ (rising after the ascension to the highest place). It is a short but strong book. I would pair it with Mark Jones' Knowing Christ .  The Glamour of Grammar by Roy Peter Clark. Clark is a good writing coach, but he crossed in this book from crass to vulgar. I don't understand why he had to be so vulgar when explaining grammar. I threw it away.  Alisse Califry by Elizabeth Radosevich. I re...

I can mark every four years since 1998 by the World Cup. I was 14 that year. It was a big deal that we played Iran in the group stage. The USA team didn't do well; the coach tried out a strange 3-6-1 formation that I've never seen since. I was hooked on soccer though. I could tell you about the players and events of each World Cup since then. I watched the 2014 along with my kids but they were 5, 3, and 1--Kyle Beckerman and Mix Diskerud were their favorite players because they had cool hairstyles. They remember the 2018 WC in Russia, and 2022 in Qatar. We have inside jokes and stories we tell of the different tournaments. Some years they get excited by the yellow and red cards or the headers. In 2022 we made our own highlights of the great moments (those videos are priceless). This year I took my four oldest to the St. Louis Arch for a Watch Party/Soccer Party hosted by STL City FC. It was 94 degrees and so sunny. We played small-sided games while the organizers had a projecti...

It was the first thing I remember writing. I was in first grade.  I described a recent dream. We had a short assignment; this was the last year I was in public school before I was homeschooled through high school. I could barely spell, so I'm sure it was hard to read (I also wrote a story that year about "rassling" with my brother). I had recently had a nightmare that my family was living in a wing of our church. We slept in one of the children's classes. The hallway was yellow, and my classes were often on the other end. One night there was something suspicious going on. My dad went to find out what was going on, but he was in his underwear. This dream was at least a year before we moved to the church's parsonage two blocks away and really did have someone break into my dad's truck--which was right outside my window-- and take all his work tools. That was the whole story that I wrote for the assignment: my dad walking through a dark church in his underwear to...

Some of my kids and I are doing a challenge in the month of June to only read books that we are already own. The rules is that we have to read or reread books that are in our house or that are in my office--no buying of books or reading library books. I don't remember who came up with the idea, but something like it had been bouncing around in my head for the past several months.  We have the blessing of a good library near us that can do interlibrary loan, so we get just about any book that we need. We also budget money so that we can buy books each month. I often buy books for $4 to $6 off of eBay. I'm also given stacks of books as a pastor--from conferences or from other pastors that are clearing out their libraries.  This is a chance for us to just read and reread the things that we have. Since I may only read two or three books this month, I might extend the challenge a while longer. I'm reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose because the Lewis and Clark expedit...

I've noticed a trend that many writers are moving to newsletters away from blogs and magazine-style websites. I have several concerns about that and reasons that I still write for my blog instead of writing a newsletter. One of the downsides to newsletters is that it means it is harder to find good things to read on the internet--especially free writing. Everything is sliced up and behind many different paywalls and subscription funnels. Blogs were free and RSS readers gathered them together easily. Even though you might have to buy or subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine in the past, you got a lot of different writers in one place for a very cheap price. Even mid-sized newspapers and magazines had several good writers. Now, good writing (and editing) is more fragmented than ever. I also have concerns about how newsletters turn readers into a commodity. It eliminates the relationship that a writer and a reader can have. I wonder if it affects your writing for you to be getting yo...

Many school children used cheap fountain pens at school 60 years ago. Something like a Shaeffer School Pen. I suggest that every person should get a cheap fountain pen. Nice fountain pens aren't for everyone. Nice fountain pens aren't even for most people. I have several cheap fountain pens, a couple of $20 fountain pens, and one very nice fountain pen that I got as part of the inventory when I bought a friend's fountain pen business. I'm not in the fountain pen business anymore. I sold out all my inventory and did not replenish. I found that my favorite fountain pens are the cheap ones. They're the ones that I enjoy using all the time and carry with me most of the time.  What makes them fun?  I don't worry about them. I haven't broken any of them. If I did, it wouldn't be a big problem. I can carry them with me all the time because of this. They are easy to slide into my my notebook cover. They write smoothly. They are even some of my smoothest pens, an...

Two or three months ago, I unsubscribed to most of the podcasts that I listened to. At the time I was subscribed to like 50 or 60 podcasts. I normally had 10 episodes lined up. If I was bored. I'd look at my podcast feed to see if there's anything new that I wanted to listen to.  I realized that podcasts were requiring too much of my attention. I listened to them while I worked in the garden, while I rode in the car, while I did the dishes, and while I worked out. I started listening to podcasts when I got a smartphone to have something to listen to in the car and when mowing. I rationalized it that I was gathering illustrations for preaching and teaching. There was no down time, though, for silence or for listening to audiobooks, the Bible, or music. I realized that I needed to cut back. I unsubscribed to almost everything. I kept some soccer podcasts. It made looking at my podcast app much less interesting. It also meant there was a lot less that I felt was urgent or importan...

I preach a historic sermon for our sunrise service every Easter. This year I preached a sermon based on a Charles Spurgeon's sermon on Philippians 3:10 on knowing the power of Christ's resurrection. When I was reading/studying to prepare, I wondered what made Spurgeon's mind work the way that it did. What did he read and think about that allowed him to see with such uniqueness, power, and clarity? I understand that he was unique. I don't seek to match Spurgeon's gifts. He was a prodigy as a young man, and God did something special in his life. I don't want to match Martyn Lloyd-Jones' gifts or J.C. Ryle's gifts. But I think it is worth seeking to see the way that they saw. When I was in seminary, I took at class on C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. We read most of what each of them wrote. I've said before that the biggest value was in learning to think like they think. I can read Spurgeon, Newton, Ryle, Lloyd-Jones, etc., and I do. I now want to go f...

  It's finally past the last frost (today is actually the official last frost, and we were close this morning). Weather can be up and down all spring, but I think April will finish pretty warmly. I thought I'd do a garden update. You can see red onions and Victoria Rhubarb in the picture above. Rhubarb has done really well this spring. The onions look like rows of soldiers. The larger onion in the picture is a holdover from last year. I let it go hoping that it will go to seed--onions only produce seeds in their second year. We also have radishes, carrots, and lettuce growing. I planted some warm-weather seeds in the ground over the weekend so that they have a few days to germinate such as National Pickling cucumbers, Green Light F1 cucumbers, Jade bush beans, and Blue Lake pole beans. I'm also hardening off some red lettuces, all the tomatoes and all the peppers.  I overseed the lawn every spring and fall. We just haven't had great weather in spring or fall for oversee...

Someone asked me what is new at the church recently. I sputtered and stuttered about some new things I was working on. They weren't my priorities. They weren't what I was excited about. I got sucked into the question.  It happened again last week. Someone asked what was new. I tried to find something to say. Here is what I wish I had said: There is very little new in pastoring. Pastor is faithfulness to the basics with creativity and energy.  The basics of pastoring don't change--preach, pray, love people, and suffer. We equip the saints for works of service. That hasn't changed in 2000 years. It would be a problem if the job changed.  What does change is that we do the same thing with creativity and energy. I picked up this nuance from a Paul Graham post called " The Right Kind of Stubborn ." He isn't a church leader and isn't writing for church leaders, but he explores the difference between stubbornness and persistence. He says energy and imaginatio...

Being in my forties has changed my reading priorities. I read 50-70 books per year. That means I will likely read only 2800 more books in my lifetime. I will only read 1500 more books before I reach retirement age.  My approach was pretty haphazard from my 20's to my 40's. Unless it was required for school, I read whatever caught my eye and often was just the latest books that came out. That made my reading really random. If I heard a great interview with an author, I added it my list of books to read. I enjoyed that randomness, but I decided recently that I didn't want to be quite so random. One of the ways that I have reprioritized my reading is that I want to read the classics in my fields. What I mean by fields is my areas of responsibility and interest--often career and hobbies but probably family as well. My fields are career-related (pastoring, biblical studies, and preaching), Christian-related (theology and devotion) and writing (literature and writing). I've s...