Christians have always been very pro-family. In fact, historically and in some parts of the world, Christianity and traditional family values are seen as much the same thing.

This makes the actual content of the Gospels and what Jesus says about family very surprising—even shocking. It's not as if Jesus is against marriage and family, but his teaching about how to relate to our families brings a radical challenge to our total and unquestioned devotion to our families and to our practice of putting our families first, above all else. CCL Director Tony Payne chats to Simon Flinders, Archdeacon to the Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, about Jesus’ radical new perspective on family life.

For an edited transcript and show notes, visit our website.

To ask questions or to get in touch with us about this series, send us a voice memo or email to ccl AT moore edu au.

Find out more and register for the 2026 Priscilla & Aquila Centre Annual Conference (Mon 2 Feb 2026). Simon Flinders will be delivering the plenary addresses on the topic of “Radical kinship: Men and women in God’s family”.

Support the work of the Centre by making a tax-deductible donation.

Please note: The episode transcript on your podcast platform may have been generated by AI and has not been checked for accuracy. If quoting, please check against the audio.

One of the commonplaces of our culture is to distinguish between sex and gender. However, it wasn’t that long ago, when filling in forms, that we were asked about our sex—whether we’re male or female. Now forms ask us for our gender, and they often give us more than two options.

But did you know that the word “gender”, as applied to someone’s sexual nature or expression or identity, is a very recent invention? We only really started doing that in the late 1950s and 60s. The introduction of the idea of gender, and its separation or decoupling from the concept of sex so that we now have two potentially different things—sex and gender—is one of the extraordinary features of the story of Western culture over the past 30-40 years.

In this episode of the Centre of the Christian Living podcast, Rob Smith tells the story of how that happened, why it’s had such a massive impact on our society, and how it all relates to God’s theory of sex in his word.

For an edited transcript and show notes, visit our website.

To ask questions or to get in touch with us about this series, send us a voice memo or email to ccl AT moore edu au.

Find out more and register for the 2026 Priscilla & Aquila Centre Annual Conference(Mon 2 Feb 2026)

Support the work of the Centre by making a tax-deductible donation.

Please note: The episode transcript on your podcast platform may have been generated by AI and has not been checked for accuracy. If quoting, please check against the audio.

If there’s one word or concept that you would say is at the very centre of the Christian life, it’s the idea of faith. In fact, sometimes we describe the whole of Christianity as simply “the faith”.

Yet for something that’s so central and so foundational, it’s surprising how often people are confused or have misunderstandings about the nature and meaning of faith. In this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast, we’re going to seek to dispel that confusion and sharpen our understanding of faith and its place at the foundation of the Christian life.

For an edited transcript and show notes, visit our website.

To ask questions or to get in touch with us about this series, send us a voice memo or email to ccl AT moore edu au.

Next CCL event: The smartphone disciple (Mon 27 Oct).

Support the work of the Centre by making a tax-deductible donation.

Please note: The episode transcript on your podcast platform may have been generated by AI and has not been checked for accuracy. If quoting, please check against the audio.