Conciliar Media Ministries

Latest News:

Conciliar Releases Marriage Book by Fr. Constantine Nasr

An important new resource has just been produced for Orthodox couples. In Mastering the Art of Marriage: Staying Together When the World Pulls You Apart, Antiochian priest Fr. Constantine Nasr (St. Elijah, Oklahoma City) writes about the love, commitment and hard work involved in making marriages last. "As a pastor for the last 38 years," he notes, "I have had many young couples discuss their plans for marriage with me. I have seen their joy, their excitement and their eagerness to enter into marriage. During the same 38 years I have had many married couples come to me with their marriages in trouble. These same young couples that had been filled with happiness were now filled with anger, distrust and pain. It is staggering to hear that two out of three marriages will end in divorce. It is not the statistic that staggers me. It is the massive pain of divorce that staggers me."

Fr. Constantine continues, "The old signs that guided couples are gone. Today young couples head off in any number of directions hoping it will lead to happiness. Sadly, those roads most often lead to divorce."

Bishop Michael Dahulich of the Orthodox Church in America calls the book "...a resource masterpiece (which) combines the wisdom of the Scripture and the Holy Fathers throughout the centuries and the guidance of modern scholarship and marriage counseling from our own time."

Read the book's first chapter here.

Ancient Faith Radio Announces Survey Results

Bobby Maddex, AFR Operations ManagerBobby Maddex, AFR Operations ManagerAncient Faith Radio Operations Manager Bobby Maddex, reports on results from their recent listener survey: 

Thanks so much for participating in the 2011 Ancient Faith Radio (AFR) listener survey. We had a record number of respondents and learned so much about who you are and how you use our radio station. For example, we discovered that a sizable portion of our listening audience (11.1%) is comprised of Orthodox inquirers. We learned that most of you (52.4%) listen to AFR for our podcasts, and that in addition to our beloved daily features—The Path, Saint of the Day, and Coffee Cup Commentaries—the most popular of these programs are Speaking the Truth in Love, The Illumined Heart, At the Intersection of East and West, Frederica Here and Now, and The Names of Jesus. And we discovered that most of you (56.1%) initially heard about the station from either a friend or a search engine. Here are a few of the other things we learned (top answers only):

What is your Orthodox jurisdiction?

Antiochian 31.0%

OCA 24.3%

Greek 20.1%

ROCOR 6.1%

Russian 5.4%

The Quiet Cradle Interview Features Antiochian Writer

Janice BidwellJanice BidwellAncient Faith Radio (AFR) podcast The Illumined Heart has released an interview with lifelong Antiochian Christian Janice Bidwell titled "The Quiet Cradle."   Asks host Kevin Allen in the podcast's description, "Are converts to Orthodox Christianity dominating the media with their 'journey stories' and 'fast-paced, high-energy' perspectives, while the more quiet, perhaps lumbering, but deeply-rooted faith of cradle-born Orthodox is obscured in the process? Are traditions and customs being introduced by some convert clergy and laity that feel new and even strange to those with deep Orthodox roots? Is there a growing 'cradle - convert gap' in the Orthodox Church in North America?"

Janice Bidwell attends St. Anthony the Great Antiochian Orthodox Church in La Jolla, California, an active and diverse parish in a suburb of San Diego. A blogger who writes under the name Prudence True, Janice is also a wife, homeschooling mother, and a professor of nursing at San Diego State University. As she explains in her interview with Kevin Allen, Bidwell began to write reflections about growing up Orthodox when she noticed that most of the writers on websites and blogs were converts to the faith. In pieces such as Beyond My Eyes, Janice began to explore the meaning of her heritage, passed from generation to generation in her family, and what it had been like to grow up Orthodox in the midst of an American culture dominated by other Christian traditions.

Friends of the Hogar Rafael Ayau and AFR, Release "Hymns of the Hogar"

Hogar Rafael ChildrenHogar Rafael ChildrenAncient Faith Radio announces that the CD "Hymns of the Hogar" is now available here.

In May 2010, Ancient Faith Radio, at the request of the Friends of the Hogar Rafael Ayau, recorded the children of the Hogar Rafael Ayau in Guatemala City singing the Orthodox Christian Hymns for Matins and Vespers as they do in their daily lives at the Hogar.

The CD includes 25 tracks. All proceeds from the sale of the CD will support the Capital Campaign Building Fund to bring construction of a new home for the children, Hogar San Miguel, to fruition. The children are in desperate need of a safer place to live away from the dangers surrounding the current orphanage.

The CD's are priced at $22 - $18.00 plus $4 for Shipping and Handling. 

Interview with Antiochian Archpriest Gregory Hallam, Manchester, UK

Archpriest Gregory Hallam, Dean of the Antiochian Orthodox Deanery of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and blogger at Antioch Abouna, recently launched a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. Titled A Voice From the Isles, the podcast features Fr. Gregory's sermons and lectures, delivered to Orthodox Christians and inquirers in the United Kingdom. Recently, antiochian.org caught up with him in cyberspace, where he graciously answered our questions.
 

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Father. How does a Christian clergyman in the United Kingdom end up as a priest and Dean in the Antiochian Archdiocese?

I wasn't raised in the Anglican Church but I served it for 12 years as a priest after coming to faith in my early 20s.  My journey to Orthodoxy is a long story so I will just give you a reasonably detailed but short summary. 

My first encounter with the Orthodox Church was at Anglican seminary 30 years ago when I attended a liturgy in English at a parish in the Greek Archdiocese in Southampton.  This was in the context of an ecumenical visit from our college to the church there.  I was blown away by the worship much in the same way that the emissaries of Kiev reacted after experiencing the Liturgy at the Great Church in Constantinople.  I then began a theological exploration of Orthodoxy while still at Anglican seminary and found that it rang true in every aspect of Christian life.

Conciliar Media Highlights

About the Department of Conciliar Media Ministries

The Antiochian Archdiocese places a high priority on outreach and communication through a variety of mediums. This is particularly demonstrated by Conciliar Media Ministries, which encompasses both Conciliar Press and Ancient Faith Radio, an online streaming radio station. Conciliar Press has been a witness of Orthodox Christianity in the English-speaking world for over thirty years.  The popular Orthodox Study Bible, now with both the Old and New Testaments, is also a publication of Conciliar Press. To learn more, or to place an order, visit their website at www.conciliarpress.com. Ancient Faith Radio broadcasts both Orthodox music and talk in two separate streams twenty-four hours a day. To listen, or for more information about their podcasts or program schedule, visit their website at www.ancientfaith.com.