| About Andy Maples | I grew up in Knoxville, TN. I attended Inskip Elementry School for 8 years, where I was a drummer in the school band. Under the leadership of Jack King, my love for music began to develop. I played drums in the band from the 4th grade to the 8th grade. I spent the ninth grade at Central High School in North Knoxville. I grew up in Christian home. I very much appreciate the godly heritage of my family. My parents decided to send me away to a Christian boarding school in Asheville, NC called Ben Lippon School. I did not desire to go at first because the boarding school played only soccer in the fall and offered no football. Another reason that I did not want to go was that the school was extremely strict, especially when compared to the public school I had been attending. What I thought would have been a curse turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. First, I learned to love soccer almost as much as I loved football. More importantly, the rules of the school gave me a spiritual and ethical structure that I did not have. I found that I fit in quite easily to the Christian culture of Ben Lippon School. My sophomore year, I made friends with Howard Hawkins. He was the RA for my dorm and he was always very kind to me. He allowed me to come into his room to talk and hang out. Howard had a couple guitars in his room and I would pick them up and pretend like I knew how to play. Howard showed me a couple of chords and was amazed at how quickly I picked up the things he was showing me. In less than two weeks, I was playing all the major chords and helping Howard lead music at some of the school events. In less than a month, I was leading music in my home church when I was there on a visit. Playing guitar came almost as naturally to me as breathing. I think playing the drums in elementry school helped because the strumming part, which is what slows down many new guitarist, came natural to me. To me, the guitar was simply a drum with strings on it. I began developing a deep passion for playing the guitar that is still alive today, and I owe it all to Howard Hawkins for taking the time to help me get started. TESTIMONY I had my salvation experience when I was young at a Family Camp in Marion, NC, under the ministry of Robertson McQuilken. It was called Missionary Plantation. Since I was so deeply involved in sports, music never crossed my mind before I was saved. My first spiritual awakening occurred at Ben Lippon, when I discovered the possibility that I could learn to relate to God through Bible study and prayer. One of the smartest things I ever did was to set a specific time aside daily and commit that time to the Lord. CURRENT MINISTRY In 1990, an invitation to become a full time member of the missionary staff of New Life Bible Camp was offered to me. It was not a paid position. All the staff at NLBC raise their own support, just like a foreign missionary does. I thought that maybe I would be at the camp a month to a year. The raising support thing really caused me to doubt that missions was for me. That was almost 20 years ago. The Lord has provided for all my needs and giving me far beyond that I could even ask for. My responsibilities at camp include leading worship, speaking during the evening meetings of summer camp, developing the summer camp small group Bible Studies, and finding way to use my musical abilities to minister to the many small churches in our area in Buffalo Mills, PA. My musical career is really more about the camping ministry than it is about a musical ministry. My first obligation is to serve the Lord as camp, which often means I have to do others things besides music. I have recorded 7 projects that contain all original Christian themed songs. I am willing to go anywhere where people want me to sing or play. Leading worship has become more of a passion than doing concerts. As much as I love to sing songs that I wrote, I deeply love to sing songs of worship with people of like faith in Christ. I am the worship leader of New Life Bible Camp for both retreats and the summer camping programs. Writing songs has been a wonderful part of my life. The songs I have written that are used at camp and at churches. They are songs that grew out of my personal relationship with the Lord. I often read the Bible with my guitar close by so that when certain themes jump out at me, I am ready to get to work. The ability to write songs has come in handy when I am asked to come up with a song that incorporated a certain spiritual theme. I like expressing how I feel about God using my own words to express truth found in God’s Word. To me, that is what worship is all about. It is what the hymn writers did. My hope is that I might learn to write great and powerful songs like the hymn writers of old, songs that speak truth about who God is and who He can be within us. |
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