Something you might hear on an East Columbus playground: “My preacher can whoop your preacher!”

Especially if that preacher is Lavelle Smith.

Smith has been pastor at First Christian Church on McCrary Road for the past three years, but he’s been a martial arts athlete for 55 of his 60 years. In fact, he was inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame not only for his own achievement but for his role in developing champions, primarily in Free Form Martial Arts, which he founded more than 40 years ago.

During that span, he and his students have won seven world titles and 93 national championships.

Smith laughs at the playground boast. In truth, martial arts is the antithesis of violence.

“People often have the misconception that martial arts is teaching kids to fight,” Smith said. “Respect only comes from respecting others, and respect is exactly what I teach. Yes, they learn self defense while gaining self-esteem and self-confidence, but in doing so, they learn how not to fight.”
Martial arts and ministry have run parallel courses for Smith going back to childhood.

He started participating in martial arts at age 5, learning primarily from his father. By the time he was 12, he was teaching the form of martial arts he developed with his dad to neighborhood kids.
“It was kind of like Mixed Martial Arts before there was MMA,” he said.

At age 17, he was ordained as a minister and pastored his first church a year later. 

It was in his capacity as a pastor that a new form of martial arts began forming in his head.

“The MMA we were doing wasn’t very popular,” Smith said, noting the violence turned a lot of people off. “As a pastor, it was just too dark for me to continue with that style.”

His new discipline focuses on agility, athleticism and building character, self-esteem and confidence.

“I opened my first Free Form martial arts studio in 1981,” Smith said. “When I became a pastor I quickly learned that it could be a great outreach tool.”

Outreach was something First Christian desperately needed in 2020.

At the time, attendance was down to about a dozen each Sunday, most of them senior citizens.
“The church reached out to me for help in putting together a growth program,” said Smith, who at the time was operating a full-scale, for-profit martial arts studio in Saltillo. “I started with that and a short while later, they asked me to be their pastor. I accepted the position and just a few weeks later, the pandemic started, so our hands were tied on a lot of things we wanted to do to grow our church. We’re able to do a lot more things now, though.”

A year-and-a-half ago, Smith began a Free Form Martial Arts program at the church each Sunday afternoon for ages 6 to adult.

“We started pretty slow with only a handful of kids, maybe eight or 10 kids,” Smith said.
“We’re up to 30 to 40 now, even though we’re still taking it slow. We’re going to be adding a new fellowship building, so we’re operating mainly by word-of-mouth now. Once we’re in the new building, we’ll expand. But right now, it’s strictly an outreach program for the church.”

That aspect of the martial arts program is already producing results. Average Sunday church attendance has grown from 12 to about 65, Smith said.
“It’s a good makeup, too – infants to senior citizens,” he said. “We have three youth classes now and they make up a big portion of our attendance.”

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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