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DaVone MINISTRY
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FAITH | REALITY
SAMPLING'S OF THE TRACK LIST
GOING THROUGH A HARDSHIP, AND I CAME TO ENCOURAGE YOU … LET’S FLY—FROM “FLY,” A SONG THAT IS ALTERNATELY PLEADING, REFLECTIVE AND RESOLUTE.
“Fly” came about through meditation, through me trying to get closer to God at a time when I was feeling like God was so far away … It’s a testimony. It’s also my way of helping younger people be clear that, though this God walk ain’t easy, the payoff is real big. —Maples
… SPIRITUAL MILK. CAN’T GET A BETTER BODY BUILD [THAN WHEN] BENCH-PRESSING GOD’S WORD. IMAGINE HOW MY SHOULDERS FEEL ... I CAN, I CAN, I CAN—FROM “I CAN,” A SONG OF INSTRUCTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT.
I was on probation when I wrote this and fighting the message that seemed to be coming from so many places that I wasn't going to make it. With God, we can do this thing called life. —Maples
HOW SHOULD I FEEL? … I’M FREE BY THE BLOOD, BY THE BLOOD, BY THE BLOODSHED ON CALVARY FOR ME—FROM ”I’VE GOT FAITH,” AN AFFIRMATION AND DECLARATION.
WHEN I LOOK IN HER FACE, [SEE] INSPIRATION IN HER EYES … HALLELUJAH! SHE SURVIVED. I DARE YOU TO BELIEVE—FROM “FAITH OVER REALITY.”
I DON’T DESERVE TO BE LIVING … ALL THE SINS I’VE COMMITTED … YOUR GRACE AND UNMERITED FAVOR—FROM “GRACE.”
Twice in my life, I was running to stay alive, dodging bullets for real. Nothing but
Grace kept me here.-Maples
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Bio
RAPPER-SONGWRITER DAVONE MAPLES AKA DaVone MINISTRY grew up in a series of Brooklyn, New York housing projects, the oldest of his mother’s four children and one in his father’s brood of 10. On New Year’s Day 2010, he confessed Christ as his savior and, soon after, was baptized at Progressive Baptist Church in his home borough, marking a turning point in a rough-and-tumble life whose details deeply inform his artistry and ministry of music.
“I still was hustling,” says Maples, reflecting on that in day 2010 when a trusted friend—someone who knew his history on the tough streets of Bed-Stuy—banged on his door, insisting that Maples head to Progressive Baptist Church for worship services.
“My friend and I used to do some much illegal stuff together but he had gone and gotten ‘saved’ on me. So I’m thinking that he’s knocking because we about to do a something new, some new scheme, but he starts giving me this Jesus stuff,” adds Maples, who, at the time, was reeling over the tragic death of his father, at age 45.
“I heard he was set on fire,” Maples says of his dad’s demise.
Confronting still more tragedy, Maples’ mother died in 2012, at age 43, of a heart attack. Before her passing, she got a gratifying glimpse of the wholesale change transpiring in her son, who’d spent two years in prison for drug-related crimes.
The pastor of Progressive Baptist—where Maples did get baptized, and where his maternal grandmother had been a devoted member for five decades—immediately saw something special in the way that this angry, grieving, struggling, yet, surrendering young man worshiped. As Maples remixed and riffed on classics he was just beginning to more fully fathom—Donnie McClurkins’ “Create In Me A Clean Heart,” Fred Hammond’s “Find No Fault,” John P. Kee’s “No Weapon”—that pastor recognized Maples’ capacity to bare his soul to God. The pastor heard and watched as Maples showed others, especially boys and young men also entrapped by street life, how to turn themselves around.
Maples kept singing. And he turned to rap as his primary mode of ministry, given the genre’s personal appeal to him and to so many of his peers.
In his day job, an exemplary Maples is employed on the building maintenance staff for New York City’s Board of Education. In addition to creating his brand of gospel music, his main duty and ministry these days is parenting three, school-aged younger siblings for whom he is legal guardian
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