"This last project, here, it's just got to a point when it's been seven years, and the sound that I was going for at one point was kind of frowned upon in Christian rap, because they really don't want you to still talk about cars and money," he said. "They don't want to blend the two. But me, well, we grew up on the Southeast side!"

Through his old rap-scene connections, Walwyn reached out to the city's biggest rap stars, pitching a project capable of bringing Sunday School to the streets.

"Most of us, we've had something of a relationship, or we've seen each other in the studio," Walwyn says. "They know what I do now, so I sat down with them and I honestly told them, 'I need your fanbase. I need a voice to the people that listen to you. I'd like to do a project that's clean enough for the church, but real enough for the streets.'"

"I think just in my transparency and my honesty -- and me being a pastor -- no one really batted an eye twice or was confused about it," he adds. "They knew exactly kind of where I was going."

The end result is Grace Still Abides, possibly the rawest Christian rap CD ever produced. It's a strange but interesting blend of H-town street flavor, gospel and contemporary Christian sounds you're not real likely to have heard before. The album is Walwyn's first to be released under his birth name, a move he says helped free him up to be himself rather than try to be more Christian or more street.

This was no charity album. Walwyn had to sit each guest rapper down and talk money, but he got 'em. The pastor says that Scarface was the first onboard, making it easier for the others to take him seriously.

Trading verses with Houston's greatest rap icons, the pastor holds his own, never devolving into parody or pure cheese. Church music and Christian themes have always been present in Houston rap; here, they're just amplified and uplifted. The raps are clean, but they're still unfiltered: Z-Ro is a gangster, not a choirboy, and he makes that clear on "I'm Still Here."

"I didn't put any so-called 'Christian rappers' on the album; I wanted all the Houston guys," Walwyn says. "That was just to make a statement. I feel sometimes Christianity might put up too thick a wall between people in the secular side or street music, gangsta rap, whatever you want to call it. But if you ever really listen to those guys' music, you know they reference God. Me knowing them, I know they know the Lord."

Ultimately, the rapper-turned-reverend-turned-rapper hopes that the album will pique the interest and spark the imagination of young people across the region, offering hope not just for an escape from the hood, but from a spiritual ghetto, as well.

"What I try to show them is, you know what? I did do cocaine," the pastor says. "I did do drugs. I slept around with a lot of women; I made a lot of dumb mistakes. I was even tased by the police. Think about how dumb I was!

"But now look at what God did, to where I can show people I've been sober for seven years, I have one wife with no extra baby mama," he continues. "I'm a father to my children, and I work. When people look at me, they don't say 'This Jesus thing is too far off. I can't get there.' They say, 'If it did it for him, then it can do it for me.'"

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