Youth Movement Turns Focus From Nation’s Capital to Hollywood

Youth pastor Lou Engle, who organized The CallDC, says God is calling for radical prayer for the entertainment industry.

When things got too exciting, youth pastor Richard Witmer (front row, third from left) started a youth-oriented church.

Last fall Lou Engle was busy organizing The CallDC event when an intercessor led him to a Washington, D.C., condo that would become Engle’s East Coast office. Plainly in view outside the residence’s front window were the American Civil Liberties Union building, the Supreme Court building and, in the distance, the U.S. Capitol.

Saying he was led by the Holy Spirit months before to pray for the Supreme Court, Engle–associate pastor under Che Ahn at Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, Calif.–considered the office’s location a confirmation to his prayers.

During the six months before The CallDC, which drew more than 400,000 youth to the nation’s capital for prayer, he and others gathered before the window and prayed for the nation’s highest court.

“I believe that The CallDC was the staging ground for the great battles that will ensue for our political realm in our nation,” he said. “At the time, we never would have guessed what has taken place in our political elections. Now I think it was an answer to our prayers.”

Engle sits in his small, third-story office at the Harvest Rock Church and speaks about a move of God among youth that he believes will spearhead a winning invasion of another realm–the entertainment industry. Late this fall Engle plans to fill the famed Hollywood Bowl with 18,000 fasting youth who will join in prayer for revival in Hollywood.

In 1996, one of his prophetic intercessors described an intense dream in which an L in the Hollywood sign flew to Mount Wilson above Pasadena, creating “Holywood” on the sign. In the dream, Mount Wilson became “Willson” or “Will of the Son.”

Engle is convinced God has Hollywood on His current hit list and that youth will lead the first assault. He compares what is likely the world’s most influential city to the Samaritan woman at the well to whom Jesus supernaturally revealed her habitual adultery, an act that sent her running back to the city proclaiming Christ’s divinity.

“The Call is not done yet,” he said, rocking in his chair. “I’m hearing it all over the place that God wants to shift something in the arts and media. We believe that God is saying that we are not to curse Hollywood, but we are to go in and affect it with violence in heaven and a towel on earth,” a reference to spiritual warfare in prayer mixed with humility in relationships.

Engle, 48, may well be the man ordained to lead the assault. A man of fasting and travailing prayer, he has a record of organizing committed youth. God Chasers author Tommy Tenney called Engle “the prayingest man I have ever known.”

Engle is a seventh-generation preacher with the top rung held by Brethren In Christ founder pastor Jacob Engle, the namesake of his own youngest son. The elder Jacob was only 1 year old in 1750 when he was aboard a disease-laden ship traveling with his family from England to avoid religious persecution.

“There were 50 children on the boat, and Jacob was the only one who lived,” he said. “The women on the ship gathered around Jacob and told his mother, ‘Surely your son has a great destiny.'”

Not surprisingly, Engle has a passion for restoring generations. He said it stems from the spirit of Elijah falling on today’s youth. He says a key is Luke 1:17, in which an angel told John the Baptist’s father that John would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.

During a dream about the impossibility of America turning back to God, Engle awoke abruptly.

“The Spirit of God spoke to my heart from that scripture,” he said. “He said that ‘what I am pouring out in the spirit of Elijah is stronger than the rebellion in America. It has the power to break the curse off this nation.'”

Engle and some 150 other national prayer warriors recently met on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., where Buffy the Vampire Slayer is shot, and prayed for revival in Hollywood.

“Hollywood has been Jezebel’s palace,” he said. “But there is anointing for change coming upon this generation to arise with no allegiance to the world and no toleration, to cleanse the windows of our computers, televisions and movies. The spirit of Elijah has no toleration for the spirit of Jezebel. My burden is to call those youth to prayer and fasting.”