Dr Slinger Fran­cis­co known around the world as the Mighty Spar­row—who was bap­tised Sat­ur­day in Brook­lyn, New York —will now be us­ing his gift of singing for the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church and the Glo­ry of God ac­cord­ing to Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin.

Fran­cis­co, 87, was bap­tised by Vin­cent­ian Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Pas­tor Claudius Mor­gan, pop­u­lar­ly known as “Samar­i­tan Singer,” him­self a for­mer Ca­lyp­son­ian.

The Mighty Spar­row is one of the pi­o­neers of the Ca­lyp­so art­form in Trinidad and To­ba­go and is known for his provoca­tive lyrics and songs such as the “Con­go man” and “No Mon­ey, No love.”

Fran­cis­co was born in Grena­da in 1935  but was less than two years old when his fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed to Trinidad in 1937. He made his pro­fes­sion­al de­but in 1954 at the Old Brigade Tent where he sang as the Lit­tle Spar­row.

Dot­tin is con­fi­dent that the Mighty Spar­row will be an as­set in the church’s evan­gel­i­cal out­reach.

“Spar­row de­sired to give his heart to God and we say praise God for that. We be­lieve he has a gift of singing. God has giv­en him the tal­ent. Now, he’ll have a new fo­cus. He’ll keep singing songs to keep en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to fol­low his ex­am­ple. He’ll draw a wider cy­cle in the re­li­gious realm. In fact, his daugh­ter was al­so bap­tised yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day) with him,” Dot­tin told Guardian Me­dia.

In 1987, Fran­cis­co was award­ed an Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Let­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, Caribbean Elec­tions, Spar­row con­tin­ued to write, per­form, and tour in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry. In a 2001 in­ter­view, he men­tioned that he had been singing and per­form­ing a “Gospel-lyp­so” hy­brid.

In 2008, he re­leased a song sup­port­ing Barack Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, “Barack the Mag­nif­i­cent.” He al­so did a re­make of his “Con­go Man” song with Machel Mon­tano on the Flame al­bum.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2014, then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that Spar­row would re­ceive the high­est na­tion­al award, the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach out to Fran­cis­co on Sat­ur­day af­ter he was bap­tised, but when we called we were told he was not avail­able at that time to speak.