I was 22 years old when I accepted Christ and first sensed a call into ministry. At the time, I was in prison for drug-related crimes. As a new convert, I didn’t completely understand what it meant to be “called,” but I was ready to learn. Two decades later, I’m still learning.

In 2006, I was serving as a youth and young adult pastor in my native city of Milwaukee when the Lord called me again — this time to church planting. One night, I had a strange dream. In the dream, my wife, Tiara, and I were moving to Cincinnati to start a new church. This was shocking because I had never even been to Ohio, and I didn’t know anyone there.

I later had another dream: I was unloading rolls of sod from a truck alongside two white pastors. When we unfurled them, each roll was a different color. Together, they created a beautiful, multicolored field of grass.

When we come together under the banner of Jesus Christ, we get a beautiful picture of what the kingdom of God should be.

Tiara and I prayed and soon realized God wanted us to plant a church in Cincinnati that would serve a diverse community.

Three years later, we relocated our family to the Cincinnati area, where we met Randy Rice, pastor of LifeChurch West Chester (Assemblies of God), and Joshua Wotawa, the church’s associate pastor. I immediately recognized them as the men I had seen in my dream.

In October 2011, we launched Life Changers Church International in the ethnically diverse community of Fairfield, a suburb just north of Cincinnati.

Our congregation today is about 70 percent black American and 30 percent white, Asian, Hispanic and African. We’re multigenerational; we attract millennials, but we also have a lot of older attendees, to lifelong Christians.

We recognize there are deep divisions in our nation. We want to promote healthy relationships and be a place where allegiance to Jesus trumps any allegiance to race, ethnicity or culture. We want to cultivate an atmosphere where everyone feels welcome and valued, no matter what they look like, where they come from, or where they are in life.

Bringing together people with different perspectives and life experiences isn’t always easy. It takes intentional effort. It requires patience and a willingness to stretch and grow. Sometimes it takes sacrifice and discomfort. But when we come together under the banner of Jesus Christ, we get a beautiful picture of what the kingdom of God should be. This is the church God called me to serve.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2017 edition of Influence magazine.