c. 2000 Religion News Service

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ To most, people like Muhammad Ali, Stevie Wonder, Donnie and Marie Osmond, B.B. King, or Archie Bell and the Drells are sports and entertainment icons they can only dream about seeing live, let alone know personally.

But to the Rev. Al Lewis, they were fellow performers and even personal friends.

Beginning nearly two decades ago _ or, as Lewis puts it, “back in the day” _ Lewis and his band, Allison’s South Funk Boulevard, played with these and other notables or appeared on stage with them. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame was co-writing and playing saxophone on the No. 1 1960s hit “Tighten Up” with Archie Bell and the Drells. The single sold more than 3.5 million copies and was No. 1 on Billboard’s charts for six weeks.

“I was in the business for 17 years,” Lewis said. “I’ve done so many things, met so many people. … I have a whole lot of stories to tell _ most of which I can’t tell in the church.”

But in 1978 Lewis’ life changed dramatically. He’s now the pastor at the House of Salvation Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Birmingham and heads a church many might consider unusual because its major outreach effort is its drug recovery program _ the Imani (Swahili for faith) New Life Drug Recovery Program.

“We believe in a holistic approach to a ministry,” Lewis said in an interview, adding that more than 1,300 men have completed the program. The program helps introduce or reintroduce religion in the lives of many who complete it. In fact, most of the nearly 300 members of Lewis’ church either went through the program or have some association with a former drug addict.

Lewis’ church has earned a wide reputation for the work it has done in salvaging the lives of many _ physically and spiritually.

Even the church’s building has undergone a metamorphosis. It once housed the Walker Memorial Church where the infamous Sheriff Bull Connor, who made his place in Southern history by his harsh treatment of civil rights workers, taught Sunday school.

Lewis and his wife, a former nightclub singer who joined Lewis’ band in 1977, were in Huntsville recently for the annual revival at Lakeside United Methodist Church.

Lakeside’s pastor, the Rev. Percy L. Nolan, invited Lewis to give his congregation a look at a different kind of church outreach.

“Our church is a traditional church in a rapidly changing nontraditional society,” said Nolan. Churches have to change “if we are going to grow and reach those we are not reaching. That’s what the church is about and should be about, reaching hurting people.”

Nolan said he was impressed by Lewis’ ministry.

“He is a deep man. He has what it takes. He has the ability to mesh with every part of a community. He has so much to give and to offer. He is on the cutting edge,” he said.

Lewis’ commitment to help addicts is understandable because of his past.

“I was brought up in a Christian home. I was out there (as a secular entertainer) for 17 years,” Lewis said. “It was 12 years before I ever messed with drugs or alcohol. They used to accuse me of trying to run a Christian band in the nightlife. But being in that environment, I ended up on drugs and alcohol.

“If I had never had that experience with drugs and alcohol, I would not have understood what it means, what it’s like to be addicted and to come back, to back away from that life. I understand addiction. That gave me compassion to understand what it means when people are on drugs. I knew what bondage was like, that they just couldn’t say `I’m going to go get free’ because they had handcuffs on them.”

The most recent addict in Lewis’ recovery program is his 21-year-old son, Robert A. Lewis III, who was on drugs before coming back to the fold.

“It was general backsliding,” said Lewis of his son. “I had empathy and understanding for him.”

Lewis said it made him know he is “doing the right thing” in his work.

Lewis said he’s not a traditional minister like his father, the Rev. R.A. Lewis, who retired as a presiding elder in the C.M.E. church. “He would have nothing to do (with addicts). He doesn’t understand drug addiction. He would say they’re just stupid, they’re crazy to mess with the stuff. That includes me. He always called me stupid but he’s proud of me now.”

“It was because of my experience that I started this ministry,” he added.

“Sometimes as Christians we forget that when God called Moses out of Egypt, he sent him right back into Egypt. So our gifts and graces for ministry will be in the area that we have experience with, in the area that we were most sinful or where we experienced the most pain. That’s where we’re going to be most effective in ministry because we have compassion and we’re most experienced.”

Lewis’ entertainment career ended in 1978 when his band left him to join legendary singer Joe Tex.

He and his wife moved to Birmingham. “I was going to show the rest of the group that I didn’t need them, I was going to be a big star. … (But) I was devastated because the group was just my world. Music was my life and my god.

“I thought it was the end of the world. And really it was. In the process I couldn’t get back in a recording studio. I couldn’t put a band together. Nothing would happen for me with the exception that someone sent me a Bible and introduced me to the word of God and to Jesus Christ.”

That friend, the Rev. Jim Merritt, reintroduced him to religion, something Lewis had shunned throughout his music career.

“My father was a minister,” he said. “I grew up in the church. I sang in the choir. I was active in the church. But I had drifted so far away from it. I was open. I was down and I was out. I was hooked on dope and even contemplating suicide. He (Merritt) led me and my wife both to the Lord. We haven’t looked back.”

He resumed his education, finishing undergraduate studies at Birmingham Southern College in 1985 and earning a master’s degree in theology from Emory University in 1989. A three-week stay in Ghana that year gave another direction to the ministry he would launch.

“It literally changed my life in terms of understanding African culture, African history, African worship,” he said. It was in Ghana that Lewis received his call to start a new ministry, incorporating African worship themes in his church. He also would reach out to “the broken, the hurting and the lost.”

Nolan, a longtime friend, said, “He became Afrocentric to the extreme.”

This ministry is what he was meant to do, Lewis said.

It took some time for him to understand it, he said, but he received a message from God the last night he performed on stage as a secular entertainer. It happened in Huntsville.

“When I came to the Lord, my last night on the bandstand was right here in Huntsville. That night, the … stage caught on fire and I was out of there. And I’ve been serving the Lord ever since.”

DEA END JOHNSON