The Lowdown - the Hallelujah Kid

The Reverend Michael Shaun Walters is a seasoned minister who has been spreading the word of the Lord for eight years – and he is only 14. Shaun was only 6 when he launched his preaching career after seeing a vision of God in a cloud: 'It was fixing to rain and the Lord´s spirit poured down on me.' He was ordained a minister two years later. Now he is in great demand by Assembly of God congregations across the United States. His sermons have taken him to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, Texas, and most recently to Florida – where The Lowdown filmed him for 'The Hallelujah Kid', a remarkable film profile which launched the ninth season of the arad winning children´s documentary series. In day-to-day life Shaun seems a fish out of water. Yet on stage, with his hair blow-dried and dressed in a black tuxedo, he is transformed. With the dramatic gestures of a professional he jabs his forefinger at the congregation, darting backward and forward with uplifted arms, and exhorting his audience to mend their ways. He says he preaches 'the way God wants me to do it'. When people say he is too young he tells them, 'Jesus was only 12 when he started.' Shaun says he first officiated at a funeral at the age of 8, but he has yet to conduct his first marriage ceremony. Shaun´s message is the same wherever he goes – put your faith in God and anything is possible. With firmly held fundamentalist beliefs he scornfully dismisses the theory of evolution, and the Big Bang. The boy is following in the footsteps of his father, Mike, also an evangelist, who himself began preaching when he was 12 and who says 'I knew we would be opposed. But if God can use a rooster He could use a child.' They live in Toledo, Ohio. The Lowdown covered Shaun´s latest tour in January preaching in churches in Destin and Freeport in Florida´s panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico. Currently in post-production it promises to be a thought-provoking and revealing portrait of one of the most unusual children the series has featured – Shaun describes himself as 'a Holy Ghost field, spirit renewed, blood bought, preacher of God. And I´m prayed up, packed up, and ready to go.'