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Which is precisely the reaction many non-Pentecostal and secular bloggers are having to this film.

I conclude with my greatest concern over Fischer's approach and that of this particular subculture. In the film, Levi—remember, he's just 12—was given an opportunity to preach in one of the evening chapel services. As we watch him prepare his message, it becomes clear this isn't the first time he's preached—it's just, "I never really preached to a whole bunch of kids that I didn't know."

Levi, the 12-year-old preacher

Then in another service later in the week, a guest anti-abortion speaker singles out Levi for attention, calling him up to the front before launching into a speech.

"Here's the deal," the speaker says. "Before you were born, God knew you. Extraordinary. … He said he formed you in your mother's womb. You're not just a piece of protoplasm—whatever that is—not just a piece of tissue in your mother's womb. You were created intimately by God. Is that incredible?

"God wrote a book about your life and he wrote: 'Levi would be a God-seeker from an early age, and he would become a voice that touched America, and he would not sell out in his teenage years. He would go for God in all those days, and he'd be a man of prayer. And in his twenties he'd begin to shake things real strong for God in the nation. God's Dream: the Novel of Levi's Life. Signed, God."

The speaker thumps Levi on the chest and says, "Whaddaya think of that?" Levi, beaming, says, "That's pretty cool!" The speaker replies, "Pretty cool, eh? You're pretty cool."

There's applause, and Levi sits down.

While this segment of the video is disturbing on a level I cannot articulate, what I can say is this: "Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands" (1 Timothy 5:22). There's a reason for Paul's injunction. It's a mistake to urge and goad young men and women into the public spotlight at an early age.

Pentecostal and charismatic history is littered with the broken careers and shattered integrity of preachers who "got an anointing" at a precocious age. We don't send new converts out into the pulpit for the same reason we don't send babes into the pulpit: they are spiritually unformed. Children's characters are unformed and chaotic. Children simply don't have the spiritual, moral, and intellectual resources to withstand the pressures of public ministry, the stress of being held up as moral examples in the midst of childhood hormonal hurricanes, the pressure of feeding their elders spiritual sustenance without the moral and spiritual history that informs wisdom.

This film, its point of view, and what it sometimes depicts angers me. But I'll get over it. I just hope, in the end, that Levi and the other two children who are spotlighted—Victoria and Rachael, both 9—move past it, because the effects of this film will still be real for them long after the rest of us have forgotten all about it.

Rich Tatum is online media manager for CTCourses.com and former webmaster for the General Council of the Assemblies of God. An incessant blogger, he lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and two kids.

© Rich Tatum 2006, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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