Saturday, May 09, 2009
A different form of outreach
An instructor offers self-defense and Scripture in his class.
Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times
Lyle Miller teaches his "Christian Warriors" during a tae kwon do class last month at United Christian Inner-City Ministries in Southeast Roanoke.
Click the button above to see all of our community coverage, or go straight to your community's homepage with the menu below.
More religion stories
- Answering each other's prayers
- Religion calendar
- Scholar to speak in Roanoke
- Religion calendar
- Rosalind Hills Baptist Church: Making a pitch for the pipe organ
Archive
Before he told them to stand up straight, before he told them to learn to protect themselves, and before he told them to throw kicks and punches into the air, Lyle Miller recited Romans 1:16 with his students:
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."
And for the next 45 minutes, the sanctuary of United Christian Inner-City Ministry was filled with about a dozen young people dressed in white uniforms squatting, jumping, kicking, blocking and punching. The sounds they made: "Oomph!" "Ah!" "Ya!"
This was a recent class of Victory Tae Kwon Do, an unusual ministry at an unusual congregation that is housed at the former Salvation Army thrift store at Ninth Street and Jamison Avenue in Southeast Roanoke.
Miller, a retired instructor with a fourth-degree black belt, said he had wanted to teach a Christianity-laced martial arts class in Roanoke for years, and couldn't because he taught at secular places. That was until last year, when he met pastor Mike English at a parking lot in Salem.
English, formerly a truck driver, had started what he called an inner city congregation in 2003. It began in a small room, and grew so quickly it has moved to larger spaces four times since then -- even though most members were poor or displaced people and costs were paid from donations.
English told Miller one night he had a vision of young people in white uniforms, practicing martial arts at his church. That same week, Miller began recruiting "Christian Warriors" for the classes, which are free, with the only requirement being that students attend a church -- any church -- and that they learn Bible Scriptures during practices.
English says that some of the pupils, like many of the members of the church, come from broken homes and disadvantaged backgrounds.
"We feel that if we can take the children, then we can take the city," English said after a recent Thursday afternoon practice. "The Bible teaches us that if we don't work, we don't eat, and that's what we're teaching them, that they have to earn things."
Each student has a different story.
There was Jason Ferguson, a 12-year-old from Roanoke. His brother Charles Ferguson, 20, took him to a recent practice and said he wanted his brother in a martial arts class to instill discipline.
"I've been wanting him to get into something like this ... to learn self-control," the older brother said. "I used to get into fights in school, and the judge sent me to boxing classes. ... Once I started boxing, I didn't fight in the streets anymore."
Then there was Devin Puckett, 11, who wore several stripes on his belt and owned patches for learning Scriptures.
"It teaches you about self-defense, about Jesus Christ," he said with sweat on his brow. "And it's fun."
