Joseph F. Radosevich

There is a genre of article I see online often. I saw an article on how to talk to your kids about war after the recent airstrike against an Iranian General. Then, I saw an article on how to talk to your kids about a famous person's death after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash over the weekend. The descriptions for talking about war with your kids read like a prescription bottle or recipe. It was all facts and details and truth. Here is my suggestion: read them fairy tales. G.K. Chesterton argues in chapter 4  of Orthodoxy , "The ethics of elfland," that fairy tales help us understand our world better. In short, by making us step out of our world and see a magical land, we understand comparable things in our world better. The rivers of gold in fairy tales help us realize the wonder that rivers of water truly are. The evil tyrants in fairy tales help us see wicked people more clearly in our world. S.D. Smith introduced me to this chapter by mentioning it several ...

Cosmic Crisp I've waited to try this apple for two years. The Washington State Apple Growers have done a great job marketing it, and that is why I've heard about it for two years. I know other people that have been looking forward to it as well. It finally came to a store in our area. I would describe it as the most appley apple ever. If you described the platonic ideal of an apple, you might say "red, round, crisp, juicy, sweet, tart, etc." Cosmic Crisp has all of those in a high degree. It is super juicy, very crisp like Honeycrisp, both sweet and slightly tart. My wife thought she noticed a lemonade flavor. I love it. It's not the greatest apple ever or my favorite (Sweet Sixteen and Mutsu take that prize) but it is still outstanding and well worth buying. It makes a great dessert just to eat it fresh. I love the red color. The ideal apple in my head is red, but few red apples taste very good. This one is great. Opal I picked these up today to try...

Over dinner tonight, Emma and I talked about writers and writing. We talked about 26 year-old writers who write about life planning, marriage, and children. 26 year-olds can write novels, sci-fi, books about the structure of the internet, or the history of something-or-other. But not life planning. I mentioned a quote from Annie Dillard in The Writing Life: "A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all." The kids giggled when I told them about Dillard's first book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  She writes about the bugs crawling across the plants in one specific place. She writes about the fish in the creek and the plants at that one moment in time. She helps us see other places by writing about that one creek. One book that does this well is Beth Macy's Dopesick . She wanted to explore and explain the opioid crisis. So she focused intensely on one place along an interstate in western Virginia. By showi...

I read a writer this week lamenting/mocking a poet who won a prize. He thinks she's an absurd poet. He may be right. But his lament was that another poet that he admired should have changed so he could make money. We live in a world that judges the worth of something by the economic benefit from it. Music is only valuable if someone can make a living from it. Painting and poetry are only what people pay for them. People mock those who study art or literature or music. Or they study something and lament that they cannot get a job in that field. But could there be a reason to make music, art, poetry, literature that can't be counted in money? Could there be a reason to write poems or paint pictures even if no one pays for them? That is how art and music and literature and architecture have advanced for thousands of years. There is something valuable about beauty even if is not worth money. The good poet does good work even if he never makes a living from it. I hope for my...

This next year promises to be one of the nastiest of my lifetime in culture, politics, and Christianity. I don't know how those will not be tangled up and turn so incredibly difficult. But I also know that Christians and the Church are called a city on a hill with the charge to shine brightly in the darkness. So a pastor friend and I are reading a series of books throughout the year to help us think through what it means to be faithful in this moment. Our primary reading will be selections from Augustine's City of God. We'll sprinkle in several other books throughout the year to shed light and make us think about being Christians at this time. Here is our plan Augustine's City of God Michael Haykin's reading guide James K.A. Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular 160 pages James K. A. Smith's Awaiting the King 256 pages Jonathan Pennington's Sermon On the Mount 352 pages N.T. Wright's After You Believe 320 pages At 10 pages per day 5 days per...

I have my own resolutions for the new year. Our family builds ours around 4 themes: want to learn, eat, read, and do. That's not for this post. I want to recommend two goals for your new year. Learn to take better photos. All of us take photos all the time. And we post them on social media channels every day. But most people do not take good ones. You have a good enough camera in your pocket; learn to use it better. It will help you personally and professionally.  Here is an article to get you started. Here is another one. *One tip for social media: make sure that you or other people are in your photos. People gravitate toward photos with people in them. so include yourself or someone else in your photos. **Make it a challenge and post every day for the month of January. It will force you to work at it. Pick a theme like a picture of your coffee every day or a picture of something you are working on every day. Get better at doing video. My brother and I just built a table fo...

I love to read book lists and recommendations. So I wanted to pass along my favorite reading from this year. I copied the entries from my reading list. One thing I've learned after reading and tracking my reading for the last 20 years is that time is too short to read bad books. I read 43 books this year and gave most of them 4 or 5 stars. I put books down that I'm not enjoying or don't have a purpose for reading. My advice is be selective and read really good stuff--part of defining really good stuff is "is it interesting?" *These were my favorites--5 stars. 759. Simply Jesus, N.T. Wright. 1/17/19 * * * * * (I fell in love with Jesus all over again. This is an almost literary book in the way he sets up the situation and weaves different strands that come together in the end. The hard thing about this--and other Wright books--is that he refers to Jesus in human terms which feels almost denying his divinity; and Wright focuses so much on cultural backgrounds ...

*Someone asked me recently about what I consider success and how I feel if our church isn't meeting that mark of success. This was my answer. The book I was going to recommend is At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon. It's about an Episcopal priest in a fictional town in North Carolina. (The series is so good for the first 7 or 8 books. She still publishes, but I think it is just because they pay her a lot for the books. They aren't very good anymore.)  I love it because it as much about the work God is doing in him as is about the work that he does for God. And God uses him one person at a time. Even the biggest things God does through him come from his own brokenness being repaired and from him paying attention to the person that is in front of him. I thought of this because you had questions about how ministry affects me, how I think about results or lack of results, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed to be a question about what success in ministry looks like. ...

I was thinking about the books that I've read this year. One theme is commonplace dangers. Not the dangers of a terrorist threat. Not the dangers of a car crash or airline flight--the chances of those are still very small. These dangers are online, in animals, and in the future of our environment. Online Dangers In Future Crimes  by Marc Goodman, we see the dangers that lurk online for us all. Stolen money out of our accounts, hacks that lock us out of our devices, etc. are so common now. I was talking with a friend about problems that my parents had with their computer fraud and he described the exact same situation with his parents. It's all over and will continue to be all over. This book has some super intense descriptions of criminal activity. You probably should skip the section on how organized crime uses and makes money from online sex trafficking. But Goodman explains what can happen with technology and some simple and easy ways to stay safe online. Health Dan...

If you want to know what passes for excitement in my life: I've been waiting like a comic book fanboy for 2 years to try the new Cosmic Crisp apple. And it releases in stores next week! I went home the other to tell Emma and said, "you wouldn't believe what I found out today!" She rolled her eyes when she realized what I was so excited about. I heard about it a couple of years ago and have been reading about it and waiting ever since. You wouldn't believe how excited I am to try it.

I passed a kickboxing-style fitness gym while running errands the other day. I've seen them for several years and always wondered about them and what kind of workout they give. I actually started thinking that it is a gimmick and not a very good workout. I imagined the workout was a gimmick. When I was a trainer, I knew the perfect workouts. I worked hard on learning the best principles and figuring out the perfect method for each client. For some people 20 minutes was all they needed for the right workout. But my workouts were at least 45 minutes. They were perfect. Now, I don't live in a gym. Working out has to fit around other priorities. And a 45 minute workout doesn't work or sound fun anymore. I've had to adjust my workouts. I've had to stop letting the perfect workout be the enemy of a good workout. I used to be paralyzed planning my workouts because I knew what should be in a perfect workout. Now, I just plan for good workouts. What's in a good w...

The average church is 73 people. If you pastor a smaller church or a church plant, resources and money can be tight. Here is a list of cheap digital tools. Last week, I posted 4 free digital tools for small churches. Soundstripe--This is a yearly subscription for music that you can use for videos and podcasts. We pick theme music for each new series and then put that as the background to a sermon bumper, series trailer/invite, podcast introduction, and sermon quote videos. Having professional music that you are licensed to use is awesome and totally worth $135 per year. If you make your own creative, then this makes everything fast, professional, and short. Above is an example of a sermon bumper we did this fall. Breeze ChMS--This is a simple, powerful, and cheap Church Management Software. This helps you keep track of people, events, giving, etc. A few things we do with it: plan volunteer schedules, track attendance, keep a list of guests so we can invite them back at holidays o...

Here are a few digital tools that I love. They help me as a solo pastor of a small church to do ministry. I'm not always in my office. Even when I am, there are a lot of things to juggle. And cost is always an issue. Chrome Remote Desktop--This allows me to control one computer from another location. This is useful for setting up the service slides and presentations without having to be in the building at the tech desk. This morning, it allowed me to fix the text for the sermon without having to run up to the building to do it. You can give the login info to a volunteer and they can set up the presentation without having to be in the building. This empowers volunteers. Google Cloud Print--This allows you to turn a simple printer into a network printer that you can print from any office or from home. If you have volunteers that need to print something, you can give them access to the printer and what they need can be ready when they get to the building. Planning Center Serv...

Small church websites are different than websites for larger churches. Here are the four things that a small church website needs.  You need a picture that shows the inside of the church. If I guest comes to a small church, they want to know what the inside of the church will look like. Don't show them the stage. Show them the sanctuary. One of the special things about a small church is the congregation. Show that.  You need to explain how, when, and where to attend. Don't assume that guests would know where to go, when to be there, or how to dress. Make it easy for them.  You need to show the pastor and tell a little bit about him. People want to know who the pastor is. It's one of the most visited pages on any church website. Don't make it hard for people. Show it on the front page. Use a recent picture. It's easy to have somebody who's good at taking photos take a photo of the pastor. You need to share what you believe. A page that explains the church's b...

Noah Rothman wrote this week on "ghosting" in the workforce. Ghosting is when someone does not show up or communicate when expected. They just disappear. It happens in relationships. Rothman wrote about how it happens at work. He said that it comes from conflict avoidance and is typical of Millennials. Let's just be clear; Millennials are between 20-40 years of age. So when someone says Millennial, think of the 30-35 year-old you know as the middle part of that group. I just want to respond with a couple of takeaways. For millennials: On one level, conflict stinks. It is really hard and feels like your guts are being pulled out. But it can be an opportunity to grow personally. When you face conflict and hard conversations or difficult people, try to see it as an opportunity to prepare for the next 50 years (you do expect to live until you are 90, right?). Learning to address conflict now means that you will be better prepared to deal with it in the future. Becau...