PASTOR BILL STIEBS, in white, prays with children at the end of a Christian karate class at the Cornerstone Christian Church in New London. Top, with guidance from Stiebs. Sean Kanaman, 11, stays focused while testing for a yellow belt, which he received.

Eleven-year-old Jess Olson, for one, is sold on the concept.
"I think it's just a fun way to learn about Jesus and self-defense. And it's a lot of fun all at the same time. That's the best part," she said.
Jess has taken the class since last fall along with her two sisters, Danielle and Becky. None of them had any previous experience with karate.
"(Before) I thought that maybe it would be really boring and just something that made you do kicks and punches," she said. "But it's not. I like that it's a challenge and it's fun."
"We do a lot of games here," added Ryan Ziegler, 12. "I think we probably learn more this way instead of 'Do this, do that.'"
Karate with a Christian focus may also be more inclusive than the traditional variety, which tends to place a higher premium on competition", Stiebs said.
"You don't have to be a super athlete here," he said. "You can be the one that's kind of clumsy and falls but you come into class like this with the aspect of Christianity and it brings the love of God, and they can just be themselves. That's what I try to instill with them."
That approach was part of what appealed to Jim Ziegler, whose two sons, Ryan and Paul, take the class.
"I've got friends who've been in other karate classes in the past and the approach of their leader was not what we wanted for the boys," Ziegler said.
"Very competitive, very goal-oriented. That isn't what we're after. We wanted them to learn to be good people and this can do it for them. It's not about belt achievement, it's not about competition, it's about helping the boys to grow."
Since last fall, Stiebs has offered two classes, one for kids between the ages of 4 and 8 and another for older students between 9 and 13 years. As of July, classes also are being offered for older teens and adults.
In the younger classes, students learn the basics of stretching, balance and coordination and work on agility skills. Beyond the usual parameters of karate class, however, they also are acquainted with subjects such as stranger awareness, good touch-bad touch and
simple self-defense strategies.
"They learn that they might not have a lot of power, but it can be enough to scream, to get help," Stiebs said. "I think the most important thing is that they're always talking to their parents. These things may take months and months, but I think the repetition finally begins to take."      The older classes more closely resemble a traditional karate class, but there are differences.
"They're good competitors, but they do it in such a way that when they're done, they care about the other person," Stiebs said. "Instead of 'I beat them and did really well,' we get away from that and try to look at it like they really compete against themselves to get better. It's not trying to demean or put somebody else down."
There are also changes in the Christian karate practice that outwardly may seem mostly symbolic but do reflect underlying differences in philosophy, he said.
The frequent bowing of traditional karate, for instance, is not a part of his class.
"The way they do things, they're always bowing to each other. In Christianity, we bow only to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. So we take that out. What we do in our culture is we give high fives or a handshake."
Stiebs also redirects the focus of karate's meditation.
"At the beginning of classes under eastern philosophy, they would meditate, they would empty themselves of all thinking and begin to ponder on whatever comes into your mind," Stiebs said.
"In Christianity, we would say that's opening yourself to the evil side, when you clear your mind and begin to think of other thoughts and let your inner power control you. In Christianity, we meditate upon the word of the Lord. We meditate upon Scripture and those things that are positive in our lives."
Indeed, Stiebs regularly includes passages of Scripture in his classes and often uses biblical stories to get his point across. He uses a reenactment of the story of David and Goliath, for example, in teaching younger kids that a person's size is not always the determining factor in an encounter.
Stiebs has been involved in karate since 1975 and has taught it since 1985. But he says it took a personal crisis in 1991 for him to turn his attention to a new kind of karate.
"I had succeeded in everything I ever did, it seemed, and then a big part of my life started to fail and that was my marriage." Stiebs said.
In the process of trying to figure that out, his wife Lynn turned to Christianity. In time, he followed.
"At that point, everything changed," he said.
Over the next several years, the Stiebs work hard to build a solid marriage and family life with their two sons. It was also about this time that he first shifted the emphasis of his karate classes to reflect Christian teachings.
In the late 1990s, he stopped teaching for several years to focus on becoming a pastor. He was ordained in 1998 by the non-denominational International Ministerial Fellowship in Minnesota and returned to his hometown of New London.
Offering Christian karate then seemed a natural opportunity for community outreach.
"We go out evenings and go among kids in New London and talk to them, find out what their concerns are, what they think about church and God and life," Stiebs said. "I guess we saw the greatest need was that they didn't see the church helping them, they saw it as a forced thing, something that never made any sense. The outreach is trying to make it understandable to them. That's what I think God is doing, using the tool of karate."