Hi, everyone. This is Curtis, and I am excited to tell you about a new feature of the GoodFaith podcast, and it's called Campfire Stories.

Now, in a great campfire, everyone has the opportunity to share their stories. And so, in Campfire Stories, we want to hear from you.

We want to hear a story about what you are doing along the themes of the GoodFaith podcast, perhaps it's something about how you're living out your relationships with political polarization, how you are trying to reflect the image of God in your institution and organization, or what you're doing with your money, or your vocation, anything that has been sparked by the themes that we've covered here in the GoodFaith podcast is fear game.

It doesn't matter if it's a big story, a small story, or something in between, as long as it's a story about what you are doing in your life.

We're not so much interested in hearing just thoughts, we want to hear stories of doing.

So, we'll put a link in the show notes where you can just click on it and then supply us the basic outlines of your story of doing, of living out the themes of GoodFaith podcast.

And we'll look at it and we may invite you to share that story on a GoodFaith blog, a social media, or perhaps even invite you to come on the GoodFaith show yourself and talk to me and share your story.

Like, how cool would that be? I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to talk with you. So, please consider joining the Campfire by actually joining actively and sharing your story with others gathered around the Campfire.

Thanks.

Welcome to The GoodFaith podcast. I'm David French with Curtis Chang and I'm particularly excited about this episode. We've got a guest, wonderful guest to talk about.

One of the most important things we'll probably ever talk about on this podcast, what is happening to our kids, what is happening to our kids and really to fully introduce our guest.

I want to go to you Curtis, tell us about Kara and then let's start our conversation.

Yeah, well, first before I set the stage for Kara Powell, our guest, I want to explain what the particular angle we're talking about our kids today, which is we want to focus on teen anxiety.

And I've been doing a lot of work as you know, David, on anxiety among adults. It's something that I think is hugely important as well.

And it's probably related to the teen anxiety issue, although I think it's a distinct issue.

My angle has been that I'm twofold. One, as somebody who has suffered from anxiety myself and listeners of the podcast, no, I've told this story about how 15 years ago anxiety was to some extent responsible for my end of my career as a pastor.

I've been reflecting a long time on the spiritual meaning of anxiety. And with the perspective that I think as a church, we have not helpfully equipped our people to deal with anxiety that we have tended to either over spiritualize it in the sense of almost calling it either a sin or a character flaw or something that spiritually we can just pray away like in that sense of over spiritualizing.

Or we've under spiritualized it in the sense that we've just outsourced it to secular mental health and just a medication, cognitive behavior therapy and emotional spiritual education.

And I think that, you know, actually, if you look at scripture and people's experiences, anxiety is actually an opportunity for spiritual growth.

And for folks who are interested in that perspective, you know, we've got great resources we'll put on the show notes from some work that we've done redeeming Babel.

I'm writing a book on that subject, but I've been very keenly aware that this idea of anxiety as an opportunity for spiritual growth may be a very adult perspective on it.

And I'm cognizant of that, you know, the teen, the rise in teen anxiety, I think is related, but it is also its own distinct phenomenon.

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