Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture.

I'm your host Scott Ray, professor of Christian ethics in Talbot School of Theology.

And I'm your co-host Sean McDow.

I'm an author, speaker, and professor of apologetics at Biola University.

Thanks for joining us today.

We're here with Dr. Joe Hellerman,

a professor of New Testament at Albert School of Theology

and a specialist on Firstst century history and the family and how that relates to our idea of the church today.

Joe, you've had some really interesting things to say about the church as a family. You believe, I have heard you say it and you've written about

it, that our churches today have oversold the centrality of marriage, family, parenting, and that that's not really an idea that was

central to the early church. Yeah and basically that came from a practical perspective out of my role as a pastor of single adults,

where it seemed that the message that was given singles in the church, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was, you'll really become a full-grown mature Christian when you grow up

and get married and have a family.

And so singles didn't really feel like they had a place in the church and that combined with my research and my doctoral program where I discovered that nobody had really given a whole lot of thought to what it meant in antiquity for the church to be a family.

They kind of coalesced and I was reminded that in the Gospels Jesus has some, well he has a few nice things to say about our natural families, he tells us to honor our father and mother and to stay married,

but he has some pretty scandalous things to say about family too.

And those of you who are familiar with the New Testament scandalous things to say about family too.

And those of you who are familiar with the New Testament might remember Jesus says if anybody

does not hate his father and mother he cannot be my disciple.

And for the life of me, kind of a pro-family church environment where

it's all about me and my wife and the kids. I really had not a lot of room for that in

my theology.

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