Joseph F. Radosevich

I wrote an article in July 2019 about protecting yourself online (see here ). Along with the article I posted a picture from Marc Goodman's website for the book Future Crimes . The infographic in that post has tips for protecting yourself online and one of them talks about password security. I've used a password method that I read about several years ago in an article in Wired magazine. Goodman explains that that method is outdated. Hackers or even an AI interface and figure out password patterns and predict what your next password would be. So I upgraded to a password manager and have been implementing it for the last 6 months. It took me a bit to get used to it, but I've found it is actually very easy once I got it set up correctly. I picked KeepassXC because it is a free and open-source software. It's hard to recommend another subscription to people or to pay another one myself. Another advantage is that it is easy to use. Until I realized how it worked, ...

*This is a bit of a departure for me. But I struggled to find the answer to this question when we got a new dishwasher: How do I get rid of the orange sludge in the bottom of the dishwasher? Here's the answer: Buy good dishwasher detergent. We often buy generic brands for food and household products. We notice little difference, so we were using generic brand dishwasher detergent. But the filter would be covered in orange sludge after every use. We cleaned the dishwasher thoroughly every week. But it was covered again after one use. As the week went on, it started to stink. I stumbled across an answer buried in an old forum post on this question. So we bought better dishwasher detergent, and we have no more more issues. The way I understand it is that higher end detergents have enzymes in them that help break down starches, fats, etc. Older and cheaper detergents don't have them or don't have as much. The first one we bought was Finish Quantum Powerball. It worked...

My wife and I launched a new podcast yesterday: Raise 'em Rad with Joe and Emma Radosevich. Season 1 is a garden diary as we track and tell stories about growing things this year. Here is the podcast page:  https://anchor.fm/raiseemrad We're launching with 3 episodes, and we plan to post every week through October. Three reasons that I wanted to launch this podcast. We enjoy gardening and telling stories about our garden. I hope that a behind-the-scenes look at one family' garden inspires other people to try it. I wanted to experiment with podcasting and what better way to learn about podcasting and audio forms than to do it. I wanted to show others how to record a podcast easily and get it noticed. I think more people should do a podcast around a topic that they know and love. The two issues are a topic and a method. I think most people should a podcast or video series around what they know and love--Gary Vaynerchuk says, "document, don't create." ...

We started learning Italian as a family 6 months ago. We've made way more progress than I ever thought possible. And it has been relatively painless. The program we use is Talkbox.mom. Here are 5 Reasons for dad's to learn a language with the family and Talkbox.mom. It is a fun, shared experience. Doing this together has been like a secret language that we are learning together. And the memories that go with the learning will always be ours. There is something fun about the extended experience of language learning that we are really enjoying. It makes becoming bilingual a possibility. I am really excited about the idea of becoming bilingual. I've studied several languages between high school, college, and seminary. I am reading proficient in Greek and Hebrew. But I've never thought of being bilingual as even a possibility. This makes becoming bilingual feel like a possibility. We use italian all the time and are able to make up new sentences or uses for the langua...

In January, I secretly did a photo challenge on Instagram. The challenge came from a calendar with an assigned theme for each day of the month. I missed one day. Here is what I learned: With a theme, it's not super hard to pick or find a photo. It takes about 10 minutes to search, prep, and post a photo. Captions matter. I think longer captions interpret what we're after and encourage engagement. People prefer pictures with faces in them. Those always get more likes. It's not a big deal if few people like a post. Often times, there were only 5 likes. Is the whole goal to get as many reactions as possible? Or to document my life and bless those who follow? If the goal is to chase likes, then I'm tempted only post the best moments and to exaggerate my life so that others like it or react to it. But that is neither true or kind. Others should know that my life is largely boring just like theirs. I hate it when people whose marriages are on the rocks post pictures ...

Writing Karl Vaters Using John Kotter’s Change Theory In Small Church Leadership https://karlvaters.com/kotters-change-theory/ SBC Voices I'm now a regular contributor there twice a month so I don't post links to each article. Below is my author archive:  https://sbcvoices.com/author/joe-radosevich/ The Most Practical Classes I Took in Seminary https://sbcvoices.com/the-most-practical-classes-i-took-in-seminary-joe-radosevich/#comments Why Would a 192 Year-Old Church Join the SBC? https://sbcvoices.com/why-would-a-192-year-old-church-join-the-sbc-joe-radosevich/#comments The Gospel Coalition ‘I Have a Boring Testimony!’ No, You Don’t. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/boring-testimony/ College or Seminary Student: Make the Most of This Weird School Year https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/college-or-seminary-student-make-the-most-of-this-weird-school-year/ Equip the Called (SWBTS) 5 Guidelines for Leading Worship in a Smaller Church https://equipthecalled.com/e...

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...