Joseph F. Radosevich

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...