WASHINGTON — Wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit and holding a Bible, Ezekiel Stoddard stood before an audience of teens in T-shirts at a youth revival in Washington. The topic was fear.
‘‘Tonight, my sermon is entitled, ‘Do Not Be Afraid,’ ” the preacher began. He assured them that he understood that young lives can be fraught with peril and doubt. But God, he said, would take care of them if only they let Him.
The sermon, interwoven with references to Scriptures, sparked shouts of ‘‘Amen!’’ from the pews. The loudest were from his mother, who was in the front row, using her video camera to capture the moment.
After the sermon, a boy, about 12, rushed toward the front of the sanctuary to give his life to Jesus. Even the preacher was surprised.
Ezekiel Stoddard is 11. Last month, he was ordained as a minister in his family’s independent Pentecostal church, an act sanctioned by the state of Maryland.
A couple of weeks earlier, he had knelt on the soft, spring-green grass in the yard of the Temple Hills, Md., house where he lives, searching for a rabbit whose nest he had found and inspecting a lizard that had shed its tail.
The reptile would be OK, he told his younger brother and sister, and it would probably grow another tail. His voice was confident and comforting.
Ezekiel is part of a centuries-long tradition, one that spans the globe. Even as the world becomes more modern and sophisticated, child preachers remain a subject of fascination and debate. Skeptics have suggested that they are more motivated by attention and pushy parents than God. How, after all, can a child understand the Gospel or the intricacies of ministry?
Others, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who started preaching in the Church of God in Christ when he was 4, believe that God can, indeed, speak through children.
‘‘God can use anybody; why not a child?’’ said David Warren, a member of the choir at Ezekiel’s ordination at Fullness of Time Church, which worships in a former warehouse and is headed by Ezekiel’s stepfather.
Everyone agrees: Ezekiel is committed, caring, and mature beyond his years. He writes his own sermons, although his mother sometimes types them.
‘‘Ezekiel really studies the Bible,’’ said Adrienne Smith, his mother, who is also a minister. ‘‘He will cross-reference, and he will go deep into the Scriptures.’’
He also likes to ride go-carts. He loves basketball, the NBA’s Lakers in particular, and isn’t above showing off when he steals the ball or nails a tough shot.
Ezekiel says God spoke to him in a dream when he was 8. ‘‘God said, ‘You are going to lay hands on the sick and preach to the poor,’ ’’ Ezekiel said.
The voice, Ezekiel said in another interview, sounded like fire. ‘‘He said, ‘Son, you are going to be something.’ ’’ The boy’s mission? ‘‘Ministering the Gospel,’’ Ezekiel said, ‘‘and running souls right over to Him.’’
Self-assured and articulate, Ezekiel is on point.
‘‘The kingdom of God is at hand,’’ he said in a sermon at his ordination.
‘‘Repent,’’ he said in a voice at once forceful and pre-pubescent. ‘‘To repent may be deeper than you think. You have to give your life over to the Lord. Don’t act like this world. . . . Have your own mind set in Christ.’’ The audience cheered.
At other times, Ezekiel dwells in a world where many people don’t understand him.
‘‘The hardest thing is, when I [tell friends] about Jesus, some of them will drop me and say, ‘You’re not down with us anymore,’ ” he said. ‘‘But that’s what God made us for. . . . We did not become a Christian to not experience anything. God wanted us to experience everything to make us stronger in the Word.’’
Adults can be just as hard on him.
‘‘A lot of grown-ups will look at me like I’m just a joke and I need to sit down,’’ he said, sounding unperturbed. ‘‘But what they need to realize: It’s not just me just getting up for fame and everything. It’s for me to minister the Gospel. That’s what God inspired me to do.’’
Smith works as a grant writer. While homeless and living in a shelter years ago, she went to the University of the District of Columbia. Today, she home-schools Ezekiel and her three other children because she thinks they were not learning enough in public school.
She runs a tight ship. Sitting at the kitchen table one morning, the children wore uniforms of khaki pants and white shirts. After doing their schoolwork, they rehearse music routines. Ezekiel, on his own initiative, studies the Bible for 13 or 14 hours a week.