This episode of lead to win is brought to you by the succeed and scale newsletter a weekly newsletter for business owners that delivers quick tips and insights to help grow your business join for free at lead2.win slash succeed.

Hi, Michael Hyatt and I'm Megan Hyatt Miller and this is lead to win our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life.

And today we're talking about a critical topic, one that's become very important to us and one that got more attention in 2020 than it has probably the last 50 years.

And we're talking about the contribution that leaders can make to diversity in their businesses and in their communities.

And more specifically, how do we create a thriving multiracial community inside our companies?

And to guide us in this conversation, we have trusted pastor, thought leaders, speaker and community activist, Dr. Chris Williamson. Dr. Chris, welcome to the show.

Hey, Michael, good to be here. Hey, Megan, good to see you.

Hey, Pastor Chris, so glad that you're here.

You know, we wanted you to be on today because you have really, I think, profound and deep experience in creating multiracial community as the pastor of strong tower Bible church in Nashville, Tennessee.

And, you know, here at Michael Hyatt and company, we've been having a conversation internally and then a little bit externally about how do we create more just and equitable workplaces as leaders.

You know, this podcast is all about leadership, our listeners, mostly our leaders of teams, leaders of companies in some form or fashion.

And, you know, we're all trying to figure this out. We recently did an episode. We talked about this and a lot of the focus of that episode was on recruiting and go back and listen to that in our archive.

And how do you kind of have more diversity in your organization?

But as I was saying to you before we started recording, it's kind of only half the battle because once you have people of color in your organization, if you happen to find yourself in a situation now where you're not as diverse as you would like to be, then you have to really create a community where people of different backgrounds, different races, different genders, etc.

I feel like they belong and want to stay long term and it can actually be something that is beneficial and not divisive.

So we wanted to bring you on today to really talk about that. And I'd love for you to start just by sharing your story of how you ended up becoming the pastor of a multi-racial congregation at Strong Tower Bible church.

Wow. I have to go back many, many years, almost 30 years when I came to Nashville, having graduated from seminary and being a newlywed to my wife, Dorena, we moved to Nashville for music.

And like so many, when we got here, we lost our record contract. And so I had to do some other things to support my new bride.

And one of the things I did was I was hired by a Presbyterian church in Franklin, Tennessee. Now I grew up Baptist, so I didn't know much about Presbyterians.

I heard jokes saying that they were the chosen frozen but I went on a cast my lot in with them and they were a great group of people to work with of the reformed faith of the Presbyterian church in America.

And it was a majority white church and I was used to being in that kind of environment because at school, I was one of the few African Americans in my classrooms.

So I was used to being a minority in the minority, if you will. And so this church was about 3,000 members and they had a heart for reaching the low income communities which happened to surround the church within about a two mile radius.

...