Milwaukee pastor used to be a drug dealer. Now, he's trying to transform neighborhoods one block at a time.

When Kurt Owens started working in the village of Sussex, he expected to experience racism making deliveries for a pharmaceutical company.

Instead, he felt the community embrace him.

That surprise sparked in him a passion to make a real attempt to bridge urban Milwaukee with its neighboring communities by bringing people of different ethnic backgrounds together for volunteer work.

Personally, it's also inspired him to undertake what he calls a "multi-ethnic" lifestyle.

It took years to turn that passion into action, but in 2016, he created Bridge Builders, which has worked in the Thurston Woods and Old North Milwaukee areas, landscaping, fixing resident's homes and helping with code enforcement. The areas are south of suburban Brown Deer, roughly bounded by N. Teutonia Ave. and N. Sherman Blvd., and W. Florist Ave., and W. Congress St.

According to its website, Bridge Builder's work has stretched across 170 blocks in the city of Milwaukee. With the help of more than 1,300 volunteers, it has completed at least 75 projects, large and small, since the organization's inception. The idea is to work one block at a time.

“We don’t try to tackle everything” said Zac Reuter, operations pastor at Bridge Builders. “We focus on particular things that are beneficial to our city and our neighborhood… Just interacting with people and seeing how they live their life has really helped grasp the dynamic of living here.”

For Owens, it's an unexpected mission.

After being held up as a drug dealer, Owens decides to turn his life around

Born a pastor’s child, he didn’t feel as though the church welcomed him in during his youth.

“It almost felt like you had to earn your way into heaven and I didn’t fit the bill,” Owens said. “So the streets embraced me.”

In his later teenage years and into adulthood, Owens became a drug dealer in Milwaukee, making him a target for both police and other criminals. One day, he was held up.

“I just had a moment,” he said. “I was told to get down on my knees and I just knew life was over for me at that point in time.”

With a gun in his face, Owens asked God's forgiveness and promised, if he got away alive, to turn his life around.

He escaped unharmed.

“Once I was able to get out of that situation, I knew that I was done with being a drug dealer,” Owens said.

He got a job as a delivery driver for a pharmaceutical company, making runs to Sussex and other parts of western Waukesha County. The irony is not lost on him.

"I was still delivering drugs, but this time they’re going to hospitals and doctor’s offices,” Owens said with a laugh. “But that was my first time outside of a central city context… there’s not a lot of Black people that live out there.”

While running his deliveries, Owens said, he was wary of how a Black man driving around a predominantly white area would be received. It wasn't necessary.

“People were embracing me in a community of people that I didn’t think would even care,” Owens said.

A white boss mentored Owens, and he was promoted and moved to Jackson, Miss., where the pharmaceutical company was based.

"The hustlers mentality that I had in the streets, I was able to take it and siphon it into something that was legitimate,” Owens said.

Back in Milwaukee, Owens launches Epikos

While in Jackson, Owens met a older white missionary who reintroduced Christ to his life. And that ultimately led Owens back to Milwaukee.

In 2005, Owens helped launch Epikos, a non-denominational, multi-ethnic church that started on E. Bellevue Place, between North Farwell and North Prospect avenues. At the time, he planned to move his family to Grafton.

A church member challenged that decision.

"Someone from the neighborhood came and just really railed into me," Owens said. He told the church member that he grew up on Milwaukee's north side, went to movies in the area, was steeped in the area. "I said, 'I live right around the corner.' And the moment I said that, the world stopped.

In the ZIP code where Bridge Builders is based, 53209, almost 70% of the residents are Black, and the average household income is just above $42,000 a year. In 53024, the ZIP code where Grafton is located, the household income average is over $90,000 a year and less than one percent of residents are Black.

He had become so disconnected from his community that he almost forgot he actually still lived there.

The move to Grafton was off. And from that, Bridge Builders was born.

Reuter, the operations pastor, said the key to understanding problems in an area is to be fully engaged with people living there.

“I think it’s easy to have misconceptions about areas that you don’t really interact with,” he said. “Realizing the complexities of the problems that people have, it’s not just one thing. It’s a ton of different things and they all layer on top of each other.”

Currently, the non-profit is hoping to raise 1.9 million dollars to purchase and renovate 20 homes in their target area in a fundraiser called, "Reclaim the Block." The idea is to develop affordable housing and increase local home ownership — two huge issues in Milwaukee because of the high number of renters paying money to out-of-state landlords.

“I grew up in an era where our neighbors, they knew who we were, they knew our parents and all of those things” Owens said. “A society where love for a neighbor is actually reflected in what you see. To me, that’s a revitalized community.”

Bridge Builders is a ministry partner of Uflourish Church, which Owens pastors. The church brands itself as a gospel-centered, multi-ethnic church called to help people flourish.

Owens' family has flourished as well; he and his wife Dee-Dee have five adult children and 10 grandchildren.

On the Uflourish website, Owens shares some of this story, and the motivation that continues to drive him. Two pivotal encounters in his life — the mentoring boss and the older missionary — were with people who were not Black.

As a result, he says on the Uflourish web page, "I value multi-ethnic ministry because I am the product of what can happen through multi-ethnic relationships."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee pastor works to improve neighborhoods, connect people