Transcript: 4 Ways to Improve Diverse Relationships in Your Organization // Dr. MelindaJoy Mingo

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“Four Ways to Improve Diverse Relationships in Your Organization“

November 2, 2020

Dr. MelindaJoy Mingo

Intro: What are four ways you can improve diverse relationships in your organization? Today's guest brings great insights from her life and her book called The Colors of Culture.

Al Lopus: Welcome to another episode of the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where our goal is to equip and inspire you to build a flourishing workplace. As we all face today's leadership challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe having a healthy culture is more important now than ever before. We are here to help you eliminate toxicity, improve your employees’ engagement, speed up new innovation, and grow your organization's impact.

And before we meet our guest today, I urge you to subscribe to this podcast. As a result, you’ll receive our action guide. It’s our gift to help you lead your organization’s culture to the next level. To subscribe, simply go to bcwinstitute.org/podcast. Hit the Subscribe button and receive our free action guide.

If you can share this podcast with others, and rate it, it would mean a lot to me. Thank you.

And now, let's meet today's special guest.

Al: Let's start with a question. What if you could look at racism and personal identity in a way that didn't threaten you but rather moved you inside to truly love others from the perspective of us having one blood because we're all made in the image of Christ? Well, my guest today is going to show you how and why this tremendous radical truth speaks to where you live and work. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. MelindaJoy Mingo, the author of this truly timely and significant new book from InterVarsity Press titled The Colors of Culture: The Beauty of Diverse Friendships. MelindaJoy, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

MelindaJoy Mingo: Thank you so much. I'm really honored to be here.

Al: We’re glad you're here.

MelindaJoy: Thank you.

Al: And MelindaJoy, with a name M.J., I'm just going to call you M.J. from here, if that's okay.

MelindaJoy: Yes.

Al: And, again, I look at your background. You're an ordained minister. You’re a professor. You’re a culture-capacity expert. You’re a—I love this—you're an entrepreneur based in Colorado Springs. You're the founder of two organizations, Je-Nai International Ministry and Significant Life Change, Inc. You've developed multicultural initiatives, both at home and abroad. You have a PhD in global leadership. You're an honorary doctorate of urban transformative leadership. And you've been widely recognized for your teaching and training in cross-cultural competency.

And this is an important time in our country and in the world to talk about these issues. So we're really impressed with your credentials, and we're looking forward to our conversation. But let me start with a question. What stirred you to write this book? Do you have a story you can tell us?

MelindaJoy: I do. Over two years ago, I just began to notice how our nation was becoming very deeply fragmented and divided again. And I know we've had problems in the past, and maybe I will say many of those problems have not dissipated. But for me, I just, you know, noticed that. I began to notice that. And so in my heart, I was thinking about my friends, my relationships, my working relationships, and what has been the difference of how we’ve learned to love each other, to serve each other across racial divides, across ethnicities, class, any of them, even lived experiences. And the deciding factor for me, Al, was humanity, that we are human beings and that every person really is created in the imago Dei, using that, the image of God, and that there's value, worth, and dignity for each person.

And I think another piece of that is my own lived experiences. I've very much devalued. In society, growing up, I grew up in inner-city Chicago, in the Projects, and was always told I would never amount to anything. I was bullied severely, to the point where I was beat in the streets, even in high school. But again, a lot of it had to do just where I lived, not necessarily my race, but the poverty that I grew up in. My dad was killed early on in life, right after I was born. Eight weeks, approximately, after I was born, my dad was murdered, and was a white man. And with that journey, I became very embittered in my heart against whites, just because of what I saw, my experiences. And I will say this here is still a part of the answer here, that when Martin Luther King died, I was a little girl, but I remember falling to my knees, and I was traumatized. I was traumatized. My dad had been killed. I watched friends on TV being murdered and stuff—or around me, not just TV. And I prayed, and I asked God to make me a white woman. And when I share this story, people look at me with such empathy. They’re like, “M.J., why?” I said, “Because I never felt I was going to be successful as an African American woman in society, just because of what I saw.”

So basically, my wanting to write this book was to encourage people, that no matter who you are or where you come from, you do have value, you do have worth, and you have dignity; and we connect with each other just through our humanness.

And I will say I was in Vietnam, Al. And what really perpetuated me is to write this book, I was invited to Vietnam as a professor to teach in Hanoi, and my six years in Vietnam were life changing for me as a black woman walking the streets of Hanoi, the first black woman teaching at Hanoi in a national university. And I learned so much about how much I had in common with the Vietnamese people, and I just wanted to write a book that would transcend race, colors, culture, all of that, and bring us together.

Al: Yeah. So your book, The Colors of Culture—and boy, now with that background, it just gives us so much more depth—but The Colors of Culture: The Beauty of Diverse Friendships, so what's the central idea of the book? I mean, you've already given us a sense of what it is, but is there a special word you can tell us or need to tell us?

MelindaJoy: Sure. So the word is ubuntu. It’s a South African word. And the word itself, the theme of the word is “I am because we are.” It's community. How do we do life together with each other as human beings? How do we learn to respect each other? How do we learn that we lean into the pain of each other, we lean into the joy? And when I saw that word years ago, it just so resonated with me that the theme of the book, again, is our humanity, our humanness, and that we do have a lot of things in common across spectrums of race, ethnicity. But for the most part in our society, we're always highlighting differences. And so ubuntu, the South African term and the theme of that and the book is basically community and to the life of Jesus and how we mirror the life of Jesus. It happens in community with each other. And so, yes, that's ubuntu.

Al: Ubuntu.

MelindaJoy: Human kindness, yes.

Al: Yeah. I am because we are.

MelindaJoy: Yes.

Al: I love that. And in community, of course, we have neighbors. And the question comes up, who is my neighbor? And of course, we know the parable in the New Testament about that, when a man comes to Jesus and says, “Well, who is my neighbor?” And that's such a critical question even at this time. Give us a few landscapes, whether it's neighborhoods or a job or a classroom or even in a church, where Christians need to be asking the question, “Who is my neighbor now?”

MelindaJoy: Yes. So here's a couple of landscapes. Our neighbors or a neighbor is the person right in front of us. It’s the person at the grocery store that you just sense needs a smile or wants to talk to you. It's the people in our neighborhood. We live in gated communities. We live in communities where people are afraid of each other, with garage-door openers that go up and down, and we don't know people in our neighborhoods. And so, who is my neighbor? My neighbor is the person that God allows me to intersect with every day. And that person or persons, whomever they are, they are my neighbor not because they live in my neighborhood, if I can say that, but because all of humanity comes together in what we call life. And so I think about that a lot: Who is my neighbor?

And I have a—I love stories. A really quick story here is my husband died a few months after I moved to Colorado Springs. We came here for a new life. And anyway, he died of cancer. And one of the things that happened, I was so depressed and went through so much anguish. And I was standing on the sidewalk here in Colorado Springs in trauma, crying, my husband in a pool of blood. And the people that befriended me were a Vietnamese couple. I hadn’t gone to Vietnam or anything. God was getting me ready. They couldn’t speak the same language, but they knew that I was hurting. And we spoke the language of the heart. And they befriended me for a year, took me into their home, fed me, taught me the Vietnamese language. So my neighbor is the person who is serving me at a grocery store. It’s the person that I am working with in the cubicle right next to me. So it’s the person right in front of me.

Al: Yeah. Person right in front of me.

MelindaJoy: Yes.

Al: Early in your book, you mentioned—and a term that's totally new to me—that term is racial righteousness. So how did you happen to come upon the term racial righteousness?

MelindaJoy: I'm trying to think about that. I just know that it was in my heart because we use racial reconciliation, that term. And so that term has come to mean, for the most part, how do we reconcile the differences and the mistrust between races? And so as a Christian, I was praying and asking the Lord, that’s okay, but I feel that there's another level to go to because a lot of people have asked me, “I don't know what I’m reconciling. I mean, I was not a part of something that happened 50 years ago, or whatever. So I'm confused. I have friends from diverse backgrounds. I work with people. So what am I reconciling as a believer?” And so the term racial righteousness, it comes from Amos 5:24, and that passage that says, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.” So  it was ethically and morally right to think of justice, but we can't just think of justice without the righteousness piece. And the righteousness is it should not be a second thought necessarily for us as Christians how we treat our neighbors. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the biblical thing to do. And when we think of justice, there can be joy in justice. The joy in justice is that we want every person—man, woman, boy, and girl—to understand their worth as God has created them. So that righteousness piece says, yes, we are saddened by injustice or those types of things, but we also have a biblical mandate to do things in righteousness.

Al: You know, I think of my early Christian training and I’d ask the question, what does righteousness mean? And it means to be in right relationship, doesn't it? I mean, that’s what I think of. And putting those words together—racial righteousness—to be in right relationship with cross-cultural, many races is a great thought for our day. Wow. I love that.

MelindaJoy: Yeah. Because I think a lot about—I’m sorry, but I do think that when we think about the heart of the Father, what is the heart of Jesus? The heart of Jesus is that He saw all people regardless, as people of worth. And that is righteousness. It’s not just because something goes wrong that we step in. It’s our everyday mantle of how we as Christians treat each other.

Al: Mm-hmm. You know, you develop the story so well in the book, and for me, the story reaches its crescendo, and it's an eloquent sentence, when you write, “I came to realize that the greatest journey with anyone is the journey of compassion, understanding, and empathy, which can only happen when individuals are transparent with one another.” I love the word transparency. So what does it mean for you to be transparent with another person?

MelindaJoy: It means that I basically unveil my soul, not immediately because it takes time to trust people. But it does mean that if I'm going to be in any type of relationship with anyone that I'm considering a friend, I don't want to just know about their stories. I'm not just going to ask them questions. I'm going to be honest and authentic and share about my lived experiences.

And one of the things that I say, Al, is that sometimes people will say, “Well, you know, people need to get over—just get over that. The playing field is equal. Get over it.” And my gracious comment is that “It doesn't matter my opinions, your opinions, or debates or theories about someone's lived experiences. My opinions never out-trump what someone has lived and experienced.” And I might not understand it, but for me, empathy is that I'm going to lean into the stories of my friends, not just my friends who are black. I'm going to lean into the stories of my friends who are white right now who are saying, “This is a very difficult time for us too, M.J. I'm your friend, and I'm struggling. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. Or that I’m looked at as probably the perpetuator of stuff.” So being authentic and transparent with my friends, I share my stories. I don't just share war stories, but I do share, “Let me help you understand a little bit, some experiences that I've had, that when I say that I have experienced racism, that I have experienced discrimination, let me kind of help you understand my stories. Let me be authentic with you and not fear that you're going to leave me as a friend, that it’s not about you. It is about us leaning and walking in together.”

Al: Yeah. I love that. So transparency offers a nice bridge between your book, The Colors of Culture, and the challenges and opportunities that we face as a culture, but also in our workplace cultures. You know, and we're all about, our focus here at BCWI, at the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, is all about workplace culture. So let me ask you, what's been one of the healthiest workplace cultures that you've ever been part of, and what made it so good?

MelindaJoy: I love that question. I'm not going to call the name of the company, but I worked at an early college, and I was the director of human resources for five years. And anyone who is in H.R., you know that there's great times, of course, helping people to find their strengths and everything. But there's also the times where you're dealing with a lot of fires and disgruntled people. So the reason why I love this place is that I got the people who were in supervisory roles, they learned how to really value the people they were leading.

And so, for instance, even for me as an H.R. person, I would always get knocks on the door. “Dr. Mingo, I need to talk to you about something. It's a person.” And usually they would call their race first. “And it's a white person sitting next to me. It’s a Muslim sitting next to me.” They wouldn't go into the issue. They would go into their race immediately. And when they would come into my office and we began to talk and I allowed them to unfold some of the situation, we realized, and they would begin to realize, that okay, it wasn't just a Muslim; we had a personality clash, or whatever. So what I loved about this place is—we actually received a Best Workplace award—it's that we spent time together as a team, definitely talking about processes, but we had what we call a human-being time every week, once a week. It was a human-being time. So we would come together, one hour, check in. “So how are you doing? What's going well? How can we help you?” My office began to be called the Sunshine Room. Now, how many H.R. places, Al, do they call the Sunshine Room?

And so here's my commitment was I am a Christian here in a role as a director of human relations for four high schools across the state of Colorado. And so I'm going to be dealing with tough issues, you know, how do I lead in such a way that I’m not causing people to feel that they have no value or worth? Even in the situation is difficult.

So I loved it. We modeled the principles of just as believers. Some of us were in situations as supervisors. It wasn't a Christian organization, but those of us who were in there, we said, “How do we model those things?” And we would have fun days, where we bring everybody together and say, “Hey, here’s the Soul-Train line.” A soul-train line is a dance line, you know. And again, when they started calling my H.R. office the Sunshine Room, they would say, “We need to go to the Sunshine Room. We have to talk to the H.R. director.” And they started creating the room as the Sunshine Room. They painted my room yellow. They had big suns on the outside of the door. So I tried to, definitely as a director, to live and model what I believe is so important, Al, that every person in front of me that I’m talking to as the H.R. director, I still need to be a believer. And I would sit in front of employees—they wouldn’t know—I would just pray quietly and say, “Father, what is my response? How do I bring clarity in this role? How do I create a situation that's going to be a solution instead of another problem?”

Al: Yeah. Boy, that’s great. I think, M.J., that we need to create a new award. It's the Sunshine Office. Who's got the H.R. department that’s known as the Sunshine Office in their organization?

MelindaJoy: You probably should.

Al: Yeah. Right, okay.

MelindaJoy: It was so fun. And you know what it did for me, Al. It caused me every day to think, God, this is an assignment here. Yes, I have the expertise and all as the H.R. director. But every person who walks in my office now, they're saying, “We need to go to the Sunshine Office. We need to go to the Sunshine Room.” And so that began to really cause me to think that no matter what I'm doing and how I'm leading in the workplace, I still want my life to mirror that of Jesus.

Al: Yeah. And because of that, it’s attractive to others. Others are drawn to it. They want to be part of that sunshine experience. I love it, M.J. Thanks.

I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.

So what was the enduring lesson or maybe even life-giving inspiration that seeped into you as a result of your time in this workplace where you are the H.R. director?

MelindaJoy: The enduring lesson for me is there's no such thing as an insignificant human being. There's no such thing as an insignificant human being. That was the lesson because I had a lot of difficult things that I had to do, Al, such as firing people or releasing people. I would say that, you know, people, right before the holidays, you know, I had to let them go if we're downsizing or whatever. And they're sitting in my office, and it's no longer a Sunshine Room, because they know they won't have a paycheck and they have kids out there in the lobby waiting. Or if I have to be firm or just a situation where we had an employee death. It was traumatic. And again, realizing that we all have stories. And so we're not just workers in an organization. We are living beings. There's an organism part to the organization. So within the organization, this organism, the organism is that we are all living, breathing people walking into a space or building with things we've encountered every day, all day long, and that's why that piece that there's no such thing as an insignificant human being.

My mom worked as a maid for 40 years in a hotel, cleaning toilets and doing laundry. And I asked her, “Mom, do you want to do anything differently? You're very smart, and you want to have a different business.” She said, “I did have a different business.” She said, “My business is the value keeper and that while people will look at me and say that I could have done something different with my life, I'm doing what I love doing.” And that for me has modeled whenever I would hire anyone or do any kind of professional-development training, I would always say to my staff, “Don't just say when someone asks you what you do, ‘Oh, I'm just a receptionist.’ No one is ever just of anything. You are a significant part of this whole organization.”

Al: Well, you’ve had just remarkable background and experiences, and it really kind of leads to this next part of my question, and that is in your book, you said, “My desire in the book is to highlight the principles of being intentional culture-bridge person, culture champions, and stepping out of fear to befriend others.” And if you don’t mind me just kind of connecting back to your early statements, is after MLK was assassinated, and you prayed to be a white girl, not a black girl, or just growing up knowing that a white man had killed your father, and so you want to be an intentional culture-bridge person, how did that transformation—it might be a long story—but is that behind your desire here, your own experience?

MelindaJoy: It is, yes. And the transformation is that for me, I had to begin to see myself as a person of value and worth, because before I could even try to encourage other people about who they are, I didn't have that for my own self. And a lot of times when we go through things in our lives, traumatic experiences or whatever, we default to that. We default back to experiences we've had, and we tie things into that. So God—it’s like when I gave my life to the Lord and became a Christian, God began to say to me that it's not about your color or what you look like or your poverty. It's about you seeing the fact and knowing the fact that you have the same worth as anyone else. And once you really grab that and have an identity reset, God began to say your identity is skewed. Once you begin to have an identity reset, now, wherever you go, then you can actually be the person of value. It's not about someone applauding you or valuing you. It’s because you have value for yourself.

Al: You can sense that, and that way you know that there is no such thing as an insignificant human being yourself.

MelindaJoy: Yes.

Al: Yeah, absolutely.

You know, at BCWI, we're all about equipping and inspiring leaders and their teams to build an even better, flourishing workplace culture. What are a few things that leaders need to get serious about and commit to if they want to bring out the best in diverse friendships and ethnicities in the workplace?

MelindaJoy: Yeah. So I would say the first thing is don't be fearful of diversity. Diversity is usually tied to certain genres of how people look or their lifestyles. But as Christians, we know that God created diversity. And so if He's excited about the beauty of diversity, we should be equally excited about learning about different cultures and people in our workplaces, and to not be afraid. I mean, I think so many times about people who will walk past people on their floor or by their cubicles and not speak or whatever. But fear paralyzes us. And what fear does, fear takes us out of a place of being intentional on relating to others. So first of all, to really be intentional in trying to get to know someone. It sounds so simple, but a lot of people don't do that.

Secondly, I would say, to have a workplace where people don't have to check their identity at the door. So what I mean by that is, again, sometimes we will say, “Well, everyone is welcome here. We value diverse perspectives,” and sometimes we value diverse perspectives until they intersect or really kind of violate what we believe. So can we still value those diverse experiences and people in our organizations, even when they're saying something that we've not experienced before?

So I love this metaphor, Al. Someone shared this, that a lot of times in our organizations, we will invite diverse people to the table and say, “Oh, by the way, we have a female. We have a male. We have an Asian. We have a black person.” Well, inviting someone to the table is not the same as inviting them into the kitchen. Inviting someone into the kitchen says, “I'm going to invite you into a creative process, not after the menu has been set and then I invite you to the table and say, “Oh, so what do you think?” And nothing's going to change. It’s inviting people into the process.

Relationships are messy. That's just the truth. They're messy. But we still have to remember that when people have to check their identity at the door, feel like they can't be themselves, or they can't wear their hair in a natural style, or to say to someone, as someone said to me one time, “I love your presentations, Dr. Mingo. But make sure you articulate your words really well so that you'll sound like you are one of us so people can understand,” or when I've been up speaking in the past, people will correct me in front of people, “Oh, that word means this here. Excuse me. That word means this,” or “Really, people will not accept you if you wear your hair naturally like this here. I think you should really think about professionally having your hair looking more like kind of what people are used to.”

So that's checking your identity at the door. And it’s the analogy of having a big stewpot. You know, we used to say the melting pot, and I'm so glad we don't use that metaphor, because people are not trying to melt down right now, you know.

Al: Yeah.

MelindaJoy: The melting pot is, again, “Hey, by the way, hey, let’s all get in this pot. But if I don't like you, you become the onion, and I'm going to put you in a Ziploc bag and put you in a pot and say, ‘Oh, you're flavoring the pot.’” Well, maybe. But that onion has to work really hard because it's been Ziploc’d. And so the metaphor of not having people check their identity.

The other thing is to confront immediately, in any organization, any areas of racism or prejudice that arise or that we become aware of. If there is someone who’s making jokes that are very disrespectful to other cultures, we shouldn't say, “Oh, I didn't laugh.” It's not just “I didn't laugh.” Is there another step above that? Maybe you didn't laugh, but now that person still gets permission to say certain things or whatever.

And then, I would say practice the three e’s of organizational diversity. So the three e’s that I have for organizational diversity for any workplace but especially at Christian workplaces, number one, engage with people. If we can’t engage with each other, what is our hope for the world? Engaging with each other respectfully. Empowering those who might have different opinions and to be a good listener. And the last e is empathy, empathetic understanding that sometimes we have people who are in our organizations and maybe they’re new to the workplace environment or something else. There’s a term called micro aggressions or micro insults. So micro aggressions or micro insults are when people just kind of poke at folks and say, “You know, you're a pretty nice guy to be a white guy,” you know? Or “You’re pretty smart. Do you speak English? How long have you been in this country?” So those are just things that people blurt out and say, “Well, I didn't mean that. I didn't intend to do that.” And so those three e’s of engaging; empowering people to really not just being a window dress, not just to say, “I have a token person here in a role, and they can't really be in the kitchen making decisions.”

Al: Mm-hmm. Well, you've just given us a lot to think about. I love your four points and your three e's. Don't be fearful of diversity. We want people to bring their whole selves to the workplace, not to check their identity at the door. To confront racism immediately. I love that point. Yeah, thank you, M.J. To not make waves. Perhaps we let things happen, as you pointed out, and we just need to really make sure we confront racism immediately.

And then the three e's—engage, empower, and be empathetic—are great, great examples. Thank you.

You know, I'd love to hear you tell a story about a leader, maybe a group or maybe even a Sunday school class that leaned in and latched into your book and began to practice it. Do you have an example for us that you can share?

MelindaJoy: Yes. I have a surprising example. I'm a professor, of course. I'm a little surprised because there was a leader on my campus who read my book and said, “We want to do a campus-wide interview. We know that your book has a Christian theme, but we love the theme of humanity and of value, worth, and dignity.” And so I had an opportunity to do a campus-wide, on my college, campus-wide interview about human dignity and worth. And I was so surprised. The people after the interview that I did, and professors, students who began to just connect with me and say, “Oh, my gosh, I love the message. I'm going to put it into practice in my classroom now, with my students.” I've had other professors who invited me into their classrooms to talk about value and worth. And I teach different subjects. But I had an entrepreneurial professor invite me in and say, “Hey, help these students understand about creating something that will value people.” So I was extremely surprised at my college, they just immediately, my book has been out four weeks—or, yeah, four weeks—that they immediately have started putting into practice what they’ve read.

Al: Oh, that's fantastic.

M.J., as we start to come towards the end of our time together, I'm curious to know if Jesus were to sit and read through your book, what statement, observation, or maybe a passage that quiets Him, certainly cause Him to think, and even bring Him to tears. Is there a passage in your book that comes to mind?

MelindaJoy: Yes. I have an excerpt here. In my book, I've written “Jesus is the greatest model of how to serve others with respect. He didn't despise differences, but He, rather, taught us how to see others as valuable. He exercised humility. And Jesus willingly gave up His rights and privileges and became a servant to all. He treated all people with equal respect and dignity, often breaking with the traditions and customs of His day to do so.”

And that passage is huge for me because, again, we're living in a society where He's asking us to do the same thing, that we've got to break traditions with hate, with disrespect, with a lot of things that we see going on. I really believe that He would be happy, I would hope, that we don't have to become cultural captives. And what I mean by that is if it's countercultural to our Christian beliefs, that we don't have to embrace that, because, again, He exercised humility with all people, and He broke traditions and customs. When people told Him, don't be with this person, they're not good enough, whatever, who was He with? Everybody that no one else wanted to be with.

Al: In your book, is there a sense of hope, maybe even for the church or particularly our audience, Christian-led workplaces? How about a place in your book where there's a sense of hope for the church or Christian-led workplaces?

MelindaJoy: All need this. It is doubtful that any solitary person can reflect God's character on your own. God's image comes to expression in community with each other, and especially in our friendships with others. The journey of our soul growing doesn't occur in isolation, but rather through our relationships with others as our lives collide in our everyday dealings in a broken and hurting world. The truth is that relationships as a whole may be a bit messy, but they're also beautiful. And learning how to truly relate to others, it takes time. But I believe most people are looking for genuine relationships and community, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender.

Al: That's great. Thank you.

M.J., you know, I've really enjoyed what we've learned today. A couple of things. First of all, your personal story is really compelling and touching. I also love the word racial righteousness, and we don't hear of that. It might be even misunderstood. But, you know, really just instead of reconciliation, it's having the right relationship regardless of race. And I think that's—and I love what you brought to us in terms of the sense of we just need to value each other and recognize every individual's worth, that there's no such thing as an insignificant human being. I love your four truths: Don't be fearful of diversity, don’t check identity at the door, confront racism immediately. And your three e’s of engage, empower, and empathetic understanding. Just all—everything. It was just a great discussion and should give us all a sense of confidence as we really wade into having a racial righteousness with one another.

So is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't talked about?

MelindaJoy: I would. I would love to just end with the book of Philemon, just a thought about that book. And it’s so significant to me that Philemon was a wonderful person. He was a house pastor, and the cultural norm of the day was it was okay to have slaves. And he had this slave, Onesimus, who was his right-hand person. He thought he was doing well. He's in the house shining his shoes and cleaning up behind his horse. But again, the reality of when God brings truth to us, now he's requiring a kaleo, that Greek word kaleo, which means, what is our response going to be now? And again, when Philemon was challenged by the apostle Paul, you can no longer have slaves, and you're saying that you love all people. And I love it because I just want to leave this, that Onesimus, his name meant “useful,” but he never felt useful. He always felt useless because of the position that he was serving in. And I think that book is a great book for employers and employee relationships. How are we leading, and how are we serving? And when the truth comes, are we willing to walk in humility and change immediately?

Al: How about one final thought or encouragement you'd like to leave to our listeners?

MelindaJoy: Yeah. I would just encourage listeners to just step out and be the heart of Jesus right now. I mean, really, we make things a little bit more difficult than it is because we are allowing so many influences, externally and even internally. If you've had a situation with someone in the workplace or in your neighborhood, from a different race or ethnicity, and it hasn't been good or whatever, it doesn't mean that everybody in that culture or race is going to be the same person. Step out and befriend someone. Step out and be the heart of Jesus. You might be the only person that this other person intersects with that will cause them to know what love is from someone who is culturally different.

And my last thought is, we are definitely more alike than different.

Al: That's true.

Well, Dr. MelindaJoy Mango, author of the book from InterVarsity Press titled The Colors of Culture: The Beauty of Diverse Friendships, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, insights, and stories, and thank you for investing yourself in everyone who's been listening and benefiting from all you've shared with us today.

And finally, is there someplace or a place that people can get in touch with you?

MelindaJoy: Yes, absolutely. My email, I'll just say, is melindajoy—my first name—373@gmail.com. You can also connect with me on the InterVarsity Press website. There is a page where it says Connect with the Author, and so you can definitely connect with me that way as well.

Al: And you can buy your book there at InterVarsity Press—

MelindaJoy: Yes.

Al: —or also such places like amazon.com. Yeah.

MelindaJoy: Yeah. Barnes & Noble.

Al: Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you very much.

MelindaJoy: Thank you.

Outro: Thank you for joining us on the Flourishing Culture Podcast and for investing this time in your workplace culture. If there's a specific insight, story, or action step you've enjoyed, please share it with others so they can benefit, too. Please share this podcast with friends on social media, and show your support by rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen.

This program is copyrighted by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. All rights reserved. Our writer is Mark Cutshall. Our social-media and marketing manager is Solape Osoba.

Remember, a healthy workplace culture drives greater impact and growth for your organization. We'll see you again soon on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.