Winterville, USA - Like many American preachers, Rob Adonis delivers his sermons bathed in sweat, passion and a spotlight. He is, however, probably the only one who spreads the word while wearing a purple leotard decked out with Spandex crosses. As the 300lb, 6ft 4in professional wrestler puts it, he "wrestles for the Word".
Ultimate Christian Wrestling, the ministry he founded in 2003, tours churches and venues around the South, in what is - even by the Bible Belt's standards - an unorthodox drive to win converts.
Its matches feature traditional pro-wrestling moves such as headlocks and body slams, coupled with themes and stories from the Bible. Its mission is to "minister the Gospel of Christ to the Lost and to see lost souls saved".
Despite fierce competition from traditional churches, it has taken off in the Southern states where pro-wrestling is popular entertainment and the battle for believers' souls shows no signs of letting up.
At one of its regular venues, the non-denominational Harvest Church in Winterville, Georgia, Pastor Curtis Parker estimated that over the past year, Ultimate Christian Wrestling matches had boosted his 800-strong congregation by more than a fifth.
"We have given away cars as an outreach initiative. We have given away 10,000lb of groceries from a truck in our parking lot. But the wrestling has added more people to our congregation than any of these projects. It gets the largest crowds, and it keeps them still for long enough to share."
Among church leaders, Ultimate Christian Wrestling's reputation has spread. The "Ultimate Armageddon Tour," which has clocked up 30 venues in Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Alabama, is about to expand into Texas and the Carolinas.
Among the 500-strong ringside audience at the Harvest Church was wheelchair-bound Mary Dial, 51, from Elberton, Georgia, and her son Rick, 33, a pest controller. "I used to drink Monday through Friday, but I've sorted myself out since I started coming to UCW," he said. "I've welcomed Jesus into my heart, and I often pray with the wrestlers when the show is over."
As they prepared to go on, 14 of the wrestlers - who go by such soubriquets as "God's Property" and "Damien Synn"- gathered in their changing room and prayed before an 8ft wooden cross. The same cross doubles as a ringside prop, with a wrestler dressed as a bloodied Jesus suspended from it for dramatic effect.
In the ring, fights featured "power dives" off the top ropes and the use of chairs as weapons.
The theme of the bout watched by the Sunday Telegraph was redemption, with a wrestler representing Judas Iscariot wilting before the crowd's angry reaction and attempting to seek forgiveness.
Adonis, in real life a school teacher by the name of Rob Fields, began wrestling professionally in 1999. The concept of a Christian wrestling group, he said, was born when God appeared to him in a dream two years ago.
He accepts that this particular brand of muscular Christianity is not for everyone, but refuted the idea that faith and pro-wrestling are incompatible. He points out that in the Old Testament, Jacob wrestles with an angel.
Mr Fields said: "Sure, there's some pain involved, and some blood, but ultimately we are giving people the opportunity to make Christ their own personal saviour. We tell people that they should not try these moves at home, so we aren't preaching a message that encourages them to be violent.
"Actually, we're more violent than secular wrestlers because we don't seem to feel it like they do. The bumps and bruises that we take in the ring - I think God takes them and puts them on His own back."