Joseph F. Radosevich

I went to the For the Church National Conference in Kansas City at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary last week. It's probably the best conference to go to right now. I go to one conference per year and use it recharge and renew most of the time. This is the best one for that. I especially enjoy the preaching, singing, free books, and the culture of the conference. I usually run into people that I know. This year I ran into a church planter that our church supports. Here are some of my highlights. I hung out on the edge of the lobby for 20 minutes one day talking with a security guard and hearing about campus life, professors, and his plans for ministry. I tried not to distract him from his job, but it was good to hear about how well the campus is doing. I suspect MBTS is the best Southern Baptist seminary right now. I am really encouraged by Charles Spurgeon's books and sermons. A seminary that promotes that vision of God, the church, and the Christian life is on the righ...

I started my first Bible rebind (grey cloth over board), grilled Oklahoma Onion Smash Burgers for the first time, geocached twice with the kids while running errands, planted lettuce seedlings for the fall garden, cleaned out some of our tomato and okra plants, celebrated our first cool week with a fire in the fire pit after the kids went to bed, made caramel for orchard-picked apples, and hosted the Sandy Creek Missions Mini-Conference.  

This weekend I took my kids to a festival all about The Beatles' music. I've written before about my 2020 New Year's Resolution to listen to all of The Beatles' music (I realized today that their name was The Beatles and not Beatles. I don't know what I was thinking.). It started as more of a music history and cultural interest that has grown over the years. My kids have been raised on their music. I heard about the When I'm 64 Fest in Prairetown, IL and knew I wanted to go. It was a free, all day music fest where all the bands played The Beatles' music. It was mostly people that were young when The Beatles were together. Most of the bands were not tribute bands, and that was part of the appeal to me. My wife stayed home with the baby, and I took our six oldest. We took a picnic lunch, set up a shade tent, and stayed for 3 bands. One was a young rock band, one was a blues bar band, and one played very polished covers. I think The Beatles are important becaus...

Here are four reasons pastors should not manuscript their whole sermon. Notice that I said "their whole sermon." I think there is place for being careful with words. It is appropriate to write out something that needs to be said in a certain way. I don't think the whole sermon should be written out though. First, preaching from outlines or notes instead of a manuscript allows you to look at the people you are preaching to. Most preachers who preach from a manuscript look down too much. Ronald Reagan read his speeches in such a way that you didn't know he was reading them. John Piper can get away with reading his sermons. Those who preach to thousands can get away with it. It is not as effective, though, as a preacher who makes eye contact. I believe that preaching is proclaiming God's word to the people in the room. A preacher who looks down too much breaks the connection that the preacher should have with the congregation that he is supposed to be preaching to. S...

I grilled chicken for Labor Day, smoked pulled pork on my new Weber on Friday, revisited Sprechers cherry cola, enjoyed the book version of Jurassic Park, played cajon for the first time while my kids led worship on Sunday evening, and found three new geocaches with my kids. 

I finished Robert Caro's 4 volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson series. I wanted to finish the series before he published the fifth and final one in the series. As of today, no release date has been set for that book. The Passage of Power was the last of Caro's books that I hadn't read. I started with Working , then read The Power Broker before tackling the Johnson books. That means I've read a few thousand pages by Caro. Here are few of my initial thoughts on Robert Caro and his work. Caro's books reward the investment. Why waste time reading a book that is uninteresting and unimportant? Robert Caro's books are as much about the craft of research and writing as they are about the subject. Each book had details that made me marvel at the interviews and research he had to do to find that information. He loves detail and is so good at finding the right detail to make his point. Caro's writing is so great. I read thousands of pages over the last 2 years, and I ...

Over lunch recently, a church planter in my region described his difficulty finding a worship leader. They use YouTube videos after two years of gathering because they can't find someone to lead them. At his previous church, they also had trouble finding a worship leader. He told me that students at the nearby Christian college were either too busy or were interning at the larger churches in the area. We talked about why it is so hard to find a worship leader: fewer people play instruments, etc. He's not the first planter that I know of who used videos for worship leading. Smaller churches and rural churches too have a hard time finding a quality worship leader. I grew up in larger churches with multiple pastors and staff members. There were always multiple talented instrumentalists and usually a full-time worship leader. Quality was never an issue. I grew up in the time of the worship wars when churches were trying to figure out their musical style. Whatever style was chosen, ...

I really enjoy David Pierce's opening sentence in his newsletter--The Installer-- each week. It is a description of what he did, learned, enjoyed, watched, read, etc. that week. I think about it as one good sentence--interesting and informative. I often find articles I want to watch or topics that I too am interested in.  Here is mine for this week: I experimented with new hand-lettering fonts for my journal, read about gardening in a changing climate , revisited High School Musical with my kids, and thrifted for a new sport coat (and other random but cool gifts).

This year I assigned a my older kids a task for their school. I gave them a blank notebook to gather ideas for jobs and careers in fields related to their interests. I got the idea after a conversation with someone who told me that he wished he had known the range of jobs available to him. When he was younger, he wanted to work at NASA. He wished that he had known that NASA had many more jobs than just astronauts. He ended up in chemistry and wished he had known that NASA hires chemists. My 7th grader, 9th grader, and 11th grader are now gathering ideas based on what fields sound interesting. I told them that I don't care if they are interested in the specific job; I just want them to begin to explore how many different kinds of opportunities there are in fields that might be interesting. I told them about all the jobs I noticed in the Missionary: Obeying the Great Commission documentary that I watched. I noticed that the movie required a writer, photographer, and editor. I also r...

When we moved to Wisconsin, I told people that I wanted to pastor there long enough to eat from the apple trees in our yard. I meant it. I wanted to be there for 10 years. Events in the denomination outside my control forced me to resign and we had to move after just two ripe apples from one tree. Both trees became special to me though. We knew enough to plant what we liked to eat and that our trees needed to be compatible for pollination, so we ordered Honeycrisp and Pink Lady. A few weeks later, we found out that those trees were unavailable and that the orchard had replaced them with other trees. I knew that I didn't like the replacements, so I was forced to branch out and order trees I didn't know. I had to decide based on the catalog descriptions.  I landed on Suncrisp and Scarlet Crush. Suncrisp was the offspring of a famous but fickle apple called Cox's Orange Pippen that was meant to be more stable. It was the only tree we had that produced, and it became a favorite...

The Puritan Treasures for Today series by Reformation Heritage. My wife has several in the series, and I picked one up after hearing the series editor explain why they lightly edited and rereleased them. The reason they lightly edited and rereleased them is because they want the truth of the series to get out and be accessible to a wider audience. I was curious and ended up loved Triumphing Over Sinful Fear  by John Flavel. I plan to start another one in the series soon. A lot of people would be helped by that short book (I'm always looking for short, helpful books to recommend and giveaway). It is short and clear enough that I can recommend it widely. Aeropress for coffee. I just bought my third Aeropress in around 15-17 years. I have several other methods of brewing coffee but nothing is as forgiving and versatile as the Aeropress. I can make a good cup of black coffee for the morning and a good iced coffee in the afternoon. I have several gadgets that make the Aeropress even mor...

I was in my twenties when I started as a trainer. I had some success and had happy clients. Now that I'm in my forties, I see that work a little differently, even though I still follow the same broad programming I did then. One thing that I think differently about is that I would emphasize baby steps more than I did. What kind of baby steps? The beginning and basic parts of each exercise pattern. Learning to hold yourself in a push-up position, handing from a pull-up bar, etc. Doing the part that you can do and working on that until you can do the whole exercise. I didn't encourage and require baby steps because so much of the personal trainer's job is sales--convincing people to start and continue with training. I was always afraid that all my clients would leave and then I would have no income. I would modify push-ups to doing them on suspension straps like the TRX instead of having them work on basic shoulder, stomach, and wrist stability. I would try to figure out how t...

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...