Welcome to a very special episode of the Allie Worthington show. This is a midweek episode because

there is so much going on in our world, so much we need to talk about, honestly so much help we

need. I wanted to bring on people who were uniquely qualified to speak to us and to speak

encouragement and facts and help us through this period. So today I have on my friend

Jared Stevens. He's a pastor. And I think he has a message that is perfect for us these days with

what we're living through. Jared, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Oh, Ali, I'm so

grateful for this time. I'm grateful for you and all that you do. And yeah, these are unique days that we are living through. So I'm just

grateful to have this opportunity to connect. I'm so glad you're here. Tell everybody just in a quick

one or two minutes, if it's possible, about you and your lovely wife and all the great work y'all

do. Yeah, so my wife, Gene and I, we started a church about almost 10 years ago in downtown Chicago in the West Loop

neighborhood of Chicago called Soul City Church. Now, we had worked at churches previously together.

We worked at a church called Willow Creek Church in the Chicago suburbs down at a church called

North Point Church in Atlanta. But we started this one from scratch. And it's been the faith adventure of a lifetime.

It has been the most exhilarating and exhausting thing I've ever done and we get to do it together,

which is really cool. We co-pastor the church together and that has its unique benefits and unique

challenges as we navigate how to have, you know, healthy lines and distinctions

between work and home and productivity and intimacy and all those things. And then we are raising

our kids in the city. We have two kids, Elijah, who's 14, and our daughter, Gigi's about to turn

12. And they're city kids. They've grown up. They started this church with us. They didn't really

have a vote in the matter. They were just told we're starting to church. So, you know, they've grown up

here in the city and have been church planners themselves. And so we are incredibly grateful to be

able to be a part of and also leading a spiritual community during these really interesting and

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