Our Life in Christ Our Life in Christ and Ancient Faith Radio

On January 15th my personal podcast, "Steve the Builder," begins airing on Ancient Faith. The focus will be about my 56 years of "real" life, our culture, living and working in the world, and just being a layperson seeking to be a Christian. Bill and I will still be producing Our Life in Christ programs in the future as we can hammer out some studio time together, but Steve the Builder will fill in the blanks in between Our Life in Christ productions.

Kevin Allen of "The Illumined Heart" podcast here on AFR interviewed Steve on lay ministry in the Orthodox Church. As usual, Kevin asks the hard questions. Join Steve and Kevin for a frank discussion of the opportunities and yes, sometimes pitfalls of trying to do lay ministry in the context of the Orthodox Church.

In the final program of the series on "Encountering Mary," we deal with some of the hymnography and prayers that are a "brick wall" to many Evangelicals. We discuss several prayers in which Mary seems to be given attributes of deity or usurps the work of Christ in the life of the Christian. But, when we go to the Scriptures we see that the hymnography of the Church is rooted in the Bible and biblical typology and scriptural language in a way that even modern Protestants sometimes use in their devotional lives, practice and hymns.

In this program we continue the discussion of the early Church's interpretation of Scripture and the typology that points to both the birth of Christ and His birth giver. The hymnography of the Church both praises Mary for her faith and obedience but also explicates the Scriptures and teaches us about the dogma of the person of Christ, our relationship to God, Christ, Mary and all the saints.

In Part Three of the series on Mary, Steve and Bill tackle some listener feedback and questions about Mary, veneration, worship and children. In the second half of the program they discuss the early second century Fathers of the Church and the universality of the doctrine of Mary as the second Eve which is evidence of the Church's early embracing of Mary and the development of an understanding of her importance in the history of our salvation in Christ.

In Part Two of our series on dealing with "Mary issues," the tardiloquent and equipotent Steve and Bill talk more about "the culture of the Kingdom," the language of the Church, and the development of the Marian doctrines in Church history.