Hey friends and welcome to the happy hour with Jamie Ivy podcast. I'm your host Jamie and I'm so glad you're here.

Each week on this show, I invite a friend to join me and we chat about the big things in life, the little things in life and everything in between.

Hey, hey, hey friends. Happy happy hour day. It is Wednesday October 7th. It is the first Wednesday in October.

Welcome to episode number 328 of the happy hour podcast. I'm so excited because today my new friend pastor Dr.

Derwin Gray is on the show today and it is a good show. Him and his wife both came to faith in their late 20s and so they didn't grow up in church.

They didn't grow up following Jesus and they are changing the world where they are. We had a really great conversation today and Derwin and his wife are

pastoring and intentionally multi ethnic church. Their goal is to see the people of God be mobilized for the people of God.

One of my favorite things we talked about today is how God's merciful impact in our own life. It should cause us to live merciful towards others and God has been teaching me that so much lately. His book, The Good Life, it releases summer and he wants you to know that there is true happiness in Jesus.

Friends, thank you so much. My book released, if you're listening to this live exactly six days ago and it has been a very fun ride these past six days. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So many of you that have reached out and sent me messages about the book. I'm so grateful for you guys. Thank you so so much. If you've gotten the book, if you've had a chance to read it, one of the best things you could do for me now and to help other people find the book is to leave a review. The best place to do that is on Amazon or wherever you bought the book.

I'll take all the stars you could give me and if you are here for the first time and you're curious, what is this book you speak of? Well, we want to make it really easy for you to find out about my latest book. You can text you be you all one word, no spaces to three three seven seven seven. That's you be you, no spaces to three three seven seven seven.

And we're going to text you all the information you need to know about the book or if you can visit jmeibe.com slash you be you friends, sit back. You're in for a treat today. Here's my conversation with Derwin Gray.

Dr. Gray, welcome to the happy hour. Thank you. I'm glad to be with you on the happy hour. I am so excited. We have a mutual friend Joel who already hit me up. And this is what he said about you. He said you are like the ultimate pastor.

He said you were pastoring him before you were even his legit pastor right now. And so those are some really high words. And I am so excited to chat with you. Well Joel is a good man, a good friend. I love him and I love his family and God kind of knit our hearts together. And I love people. I think people matter to God. And so I think one of the greatest investments that you can make is simply deposit in love and encouragement and people and I'm thankful for Joel.

I love that. Okay. So you have a book that came out the good life. What Jesus teaches about finding true happiness. It came out this summer. I'm excited to chat about it now because the thing about this book. I read through it this week. And it feels like that you could write this book. And it would be perfect for whenever it came out.

It's like, oh, this is the best time. And then I'm thinking this shows Aaron and October. I'm like, oh, this is going to be the best time. And so I want to jump in and talk about this because there's so much to talk about.

Before we get started, I mentioned that you're a pastor. Let everyone know where your church is about that. And then we'll jump into what you've done.

Okay. Yeah. So my wife and I, Vicki have been married for 28 years. Have a daughter. Firstly, thank you. Press. Lee's 24. Our son, Jeremiah is 20. We co founded a church in 2010 called transformation church right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.

We are an intentionally multi ethnic multi generational church that's shaped by the mission of Jesus. I'm originally from San Antonio. I love cheese and chalabas. And I love to fish.

And you love to fish. Oh, yeah. I'm thinking you love football as well. Can we throw that in there? I do football. I don't miss plan. So I played in NFL, playing college, played in Texas. I live Friday night lights. I love the game because of what it teaches you. It teaches you sacrifice discipline, teamwork, toughness.

It teaches you how to think strategically as well. The best leadership lessons I've ever gotten is from coaches that have coached me along the way. And so I love the game. And what I say to parents all the time is, even if your kids aren't good at it, let them play because there's some great lessons that they can learn about life.

I agree. I think sports any extra curricular. I mean, we can talk about whatever it is, but you particularly played football in high school and college and as a career. I think any kind of thing where people are getting influenced and poured into and mattered that it changes their life forever.

I need to know because if you've been married for 28 years, you've been pastoring a church for 10. I can do a little math. What went on between you playing football and you pastoring this church?

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