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  • (Misty Watson/The Daily Citizen) Sensei Robert Leamon, in black, demonstrates a self-defense move to students Brett Allen, left, and Tony Lewis at Christ-Centered Martial Arts.

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July 19, 2012

Chris Whitfield: A martial ministry

— For 31 years, Robert Leamon has been a student of the martial arts, but he said coming through the sport he never had a real purpose. He says he has competed in international competitions and been on teams that have represented his country, but something was always missing.

“I had never used it to honor God,” Leamon said.

In 2009, he started using his skills and knowledge to reach new followers to the Lord, and teach a discipline that requires, well, discipline. From then on, he had his purpose.

“God laid it on my heart to use my gifts,” Leamon said. “Any kind of talent is a gift from God, and He laid it on my heart to repay him for all that he had done for me.”

Leamon, a fourth-degree black belt, and his wife Lisa, a second-degree, run Christ-Centered Martial Arts. In conjunction with Emmaus Baptist Church, the facility is on South Dixie Highway where U.S. 41 intersects Carbondale Road in southern Whitfield County. CCMA started out as an effort for Leamon and his wife to mentor and share the word of God with members of their church in Chatsworth, working out of a 30-by-40 foot building in their backyard. Since then, the classes have been housed in a facility off of Connector 3, and CCMA moved to its current location just after the start of the new year.

Today, the training facility houses classes three days a week with roughly 70 regular members with upwards of 300 overall students as well as 35 to 40 students in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club of Whitfield County. None of CCMA’s students pay a membership fee, but Leamon does ask for a $40 donation per month. However, no one is turned away.

“God has taken care of us,” Leamon said.

Also, Leamon, who has worked for 25 years in maintenance with Shaw Industries, teaches classes in Calhoun and is looking to expand to Chatsworth according to the school’s website (ccmartialarts.com). Both he and his wife, who works in labor and delivery at Hamilton Medical Center, say the time they spend with students and working on the arts is not work at all.

“We are a ministry, and everything we do is geared toward other,” Leamon said. “This is just something that we love to do. The desire I have for my students is to be so much more than I was. I just want to give back.”

It is reaching his students that makes all of this feel less like any kind of work.

“The people that trained me — Ben Kiker, Mitzi Jeter and Feliz Pagan — I looked up to all of them so much,” Leamon said. “I think about how my students look up to me, and you can change someone’s whole life with just a word of encouragement here or a compliment there. It is amazing.”

The logo of CCMA is a blue triangle inside of a red triangle on a white background. The colors all mean something deeper to the students and the staff. The white symbolizes purity, which is one of the main components of the martial arts — purity of one’s body and soul together. The blue represents peace, and the red represents the blood of Jesus Christ which protects all.

Leamon started training at 14 during a part of his life that lacked focus, to put it kindly. Not necessarily a juvenile delinquent, Leamon said he needed the spiritual guidance of the martial arts and the salvation of Jesus Christ.

“I believe the martial arts have saved my life,” he said. “It made me want to be better than I normally would have been. Parents tell me how their kids have changed since they started coming here and how it changes their attitude. When you teach someone how to take care of themselves physically and spiritually, they usually react by making better choices.”



Chris Whitfield is a sports writer for The Daily Citizen. Write to him at chriswhitfield@daltoncitizen.com.

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