From dope dealer to hope dealer: Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell brings message of redemption to Colorado

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

He walked into church on April 18, 1999, with a bruised brow, money in his pocket, and murder on his mind. By the time he walked out, Lorenzo Sewell had given his life to Christ. That same day he went to his drug boss and quit.

That day, and that decision, is the foundation of everything Sewell has built since. 

The senior pastor of 180 Church in Detroit will bring his story of redemption and his message of civic faith to the RMV Freedom Fest, where he will speak on the main stage and give the invocation at the Mountain Majesty Gala on Saturday, June 27.

A student of the street

Sewell grew up on Detroit’s east side in a home marked by abuse and instability. His father is in prison for murder. At age eleven, he experienced his first drive-by shooting while sitting inside playing Atari when bullets came through.

“I was mentored by murderers — a student of the street,” he said.

His mother moved the family to Fraser, a Detroit suburb, hoping for a fresh start. Instead, Sewell found a new way into the same life. He became a drug dealer — what he now calls a “street pharmacist.”

“I did that because I wanted people to tell me ‘good job,’ even if I was doing the wrong thing,” he said.

A trip to Daytona Beach became a turning point he didn’t see coming. He was 18, out of his mind on drugs, and cutting himself. A security guard who asked him to leave grabbed his hands and prayed for him instead.

“No one had ever grabbed me by the hands and prayed for me,” Sewell said. “And when he prayed for me, I experienced then what I know now is the conviction of the Holy Spirit.”

He went back to Detroit as a different person.

The turnaround

On April 18, 1999, someone drove Sewell to church. He sat in the pew with a bruised brow from self-harm, a broken heart from fatherlessness, cash from dealing and what he describes as murderous thoughts about a man who had been beating his older sister.

Bishop Merritt asked the congregation if anyone wanted to give their heart to Jesus. Sewell walked down crying in front of thousands of people. Merritt handed him the microphone and asked why he was crying.

“I said, I love Jesus,” Sewell recalled.

That same day, he went to Larry, the man he was selling drugs for. Larry was someone he described as having “bodies under his belt.” He handed back the drugs and the money.

“I said, I don’t want to deal drugs anymore,” Sewell said. Larry asked, “Why? Are you sick? Are the cops on you?” “I said no. I said, ‘I gave my heart to Jesus.’”

Larry let him go. Sewell said that was the moment he knew God was real.

“Friday, I was in school, and I was a neighborhood dope dealer,” he said. “Monday, I went to school, and I was the neighborhood hope dealer.”

Building 180 Church

Sewell preached his first sermon at 19 and pastored his first church at 21. He led the Pontiac campus of Woodside Bible Church, growing it from 30 people to more than 500 Sunday attendees. He fed the community three times a week and built out a computer lab for adult literacy with resume writing and free internet access, and a clothing donation program. 

He was ordained senior pastor of Evangel Ministries in Detroit, a role he has held since 2018, and renamed it 180 Church during COVID — a name he says captures both his own story and the mission.

“180, it literally means turnaround,” he said. The theology behind it is that as the church serves the community with goodness, Sewell believes God produces the transformation no government program can legislate.

Sewell wants 180 to operate in 500 communities, providing transportation, housing, education, and healing of what he calls “the unseen illnesses of medical, mental, and dental” care. In his view, the church should be the entity distributing FEMA, SBA, and HUD resources instead of leaving it to government agencies.

“The problem is the church no longer gets involved in government, so government begins to do things that the church should do,” he said. “DHS is doing what the church should be doing.”

Separately, he is the founder of THEM (Transportation, Housing, Education, Mental Illness) which is an initiative addressing community issues through partnerships with organizations including the Detroit City Council and Wayne State University.

He also organized the Urban Roundball Classic, a sports and scholarship initiative benefiting families across several cities, and founded Parents vs. Everybody, an advocacy and entrepreneurship platform.

Politics as ministry

Sewell’s argument that politics and faith are inseparable grew out of what he saw on the ground in Detroit. He points to majority-Black cities across the country sitting atop lists of poverty, crime, foreclosures, abortions and illiteracy. 

He argues the Republican Party has failed to engage those communities. He says he is the only Black Republican pastor serving in a majority-Black city that represents a state’s largest voting bloc.

“Politics is about being able to righteously regulate resources,” he said. “That’s politics.”

When asked what he tells young people in Detroit that he wished someone had told him, his answer is to get involved in politics.

“If you get involved in politics, you learn how to redistribute your resources,” he said. 

About a third of everything a person earns goes to taxes, he argues. “You’re paying taxes from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed,” he said. “And even when you’re sleeping — it’s called property taxes. If you bought coffee, sales tax.” 

“There’s not a moment in your human existence that you’re not paying taxes,” he said. Ceding that ground, in his view, is ceding everything.

For someone who doesn’t know where to start, he has a simple entry point. 

He says to look at your pay stub. Look at what the federal government took out. Then ask yourself whether they called to get your permission first. 

He now teaches politics on a call-in radio show, three hours a day, five days a week — on the same Christian station he grew up listening to.

Sewell said he doesn’t see an alternative to the path he’s on. Politics, in his view, is inseparable from faith.

Message for Colorado

For the Freedom Fest audience, Sewell said his message is, “The window is open, but it’s closing.”

“Jesus is not done with Colorado,” he said. “Just like Jesus can use someone like Jonah, who is a reluctant prophet, just as Jesus can use praying teenagers like Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, Daniel — Jesus can use Colorado still.”

He said he wants people to walk away understanding that the church is called to lead, not just spiritually, but in the public square.

“The message is that the church is called to lead, that we the people are called to lead, that it’s time for us to fight, fight, fight for the soul of a nation,” he said. “This is a battle against principalities that promote paradigms that are poisonous.”

But Pastor Sewell ended on love. “We can love different. We can vote different. We can think different, but we’ve got to love the same. At the end of the day, it’s time for us to be able to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and understand that love is going to draw our brothers and our sisters back into understanding that this is the greatest nation in human history.”