by Nancy Huffine

When you ask Dann Spader if the 1970s Moody Bible Institute student version of himself ever imagined he would one day be a featured speaker at Founder’s Week, he has a short, simple answer.

“Nope.”

Dann, who will speak at Founder’s Week 2024 on Moody’s campus October 24, graduated from Moody in 1974 with a BA in Evangelism. He then received his Master of Religious Education and Doctor of Divinity degrees from Trinity Seminary. He served in church pastoral roles for 12 years—10 years as a youth pastor and two years as an interim pastor for a church plant. And he is the founder of both Sonlife Ministries, which hosts the eXperience Jesus (XJ) Conference for teens on Moody’s campus, and Concentric Global (formerly Global Youth Initiative), which trains emerging leaders in the life of Christ.

Dann has led over 50 trips to Israel designed to instruct young leaders in both the life of Christ and in the ways Jesus developed His disciples. He has written more than 20 leadership training manuals and studies, and his 2019 book 4 Chair Discipling was released by Moody Publishers. Over 750,000 people in 80 countries have been trained to make disciples through organizations Dann has overseen.

He and his wife, Char, a 1975 Moody graduate, have three daughters and eight grandchildren. They currently reside in California.

What made you choose Moody for your biblical education?

In December of 1970, I came to Christ at engineering school in Rapid City, South Dakota, through the ministry of Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ). It was a radical conversion, and I soon knew I wanted to go into ministry and study the Bible in greater depth. While at a summer project with Cru in New Jersey, I asked for prayer about which Bible school I should attend. As a new Christian, I barely understood the Bible and was looking at Catholic schools like Loyola or Notre Dame.

One of the students on the Cru project was tearing down an old building as part of their work project and came across an old Moody Monthly Magazine in the walls of the building. It happened to be the edition of Moody that listed all the Bible schools in the country. They gave it to me, and I went through the whole magazine and circled three of the cheapest Bible schools (I had no money!), and Moody came up as “tuition free.” In talking with Cru staff, they all said Moody was the “West Point” of Christian schools and was a great place to study.  

In January of 1972, I hitchhiked to Moody—from South Dakota in the winter—with just enough money in my pocket to pay for the first semester. A truck driver picked me up and dropped me off in the stockyards on the South Side of Chicago. I found my way to Moody in downtown Chicago at midnight. At that point, I had been a Christian for 12 months and two weeks. It was the first time I had ever been to Chicago.

Dann, your life’s work has revolved around making disciples. How would you define what it means to ‘make disciples’?

My life has primarily been about teaching what I like to call the “real Jesus” who walked on this earth. When you study that real Jesus—who was fully God and also fully man—you soon realize that His life was primarily about the “making of disciples who could make disciples.” His laser focus was on developing disciples who could multiply their lives into others.

When Jesus went back to Heaven, He clearly described our mission as the Great Commission, doing what He did the way He did it . . . making disciples. 

For me, the best Scripture in the Bible that defines New Testament disciple-making is 1 Thessalonians 2:8–11. It simply is the “imparting of our life" to others as a loving mother, a caring brother, and a godly father. It is simple but extremely demanding at the same time. It is hard to teach people how to “impart their life,” but it’s powerful when people grasp this as Jesus’ primary strategy. 

When asked to define a disciple, I simply like to refer people to Matthew 4:19. After 18 months of investing in those He called, Jesus went to a few and said “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Discipling is relational (teaching people to follow Jesus), intentional (I will make you), and missional (fishers of men).

It is not just deeper Bible studies or learning more content about God. It is the imparting of your lifestyle of following Jesus in a relational, intentional, and missional way. Anyone can make disciples the way Jesus did. Simple, but not simplistic. 

How did Sonlife ministries begin, and what is its mission?

In 1978, after watching three of my best friends, who were also youth pastors, leave the ministry, God developed a deep burden in my life to teach other leaders what we had learned from studying the Son’s life. But I had no outlets to do this. Late one night in 1978, after a couple of months of some difficult times, God gave me a “burning bush” type of experience. That night I wrote down what I felt the Lord had told me to do—start a ministry to train other youth leaders in the life of Christ and create a movement of disciple-making ministries.

The way I visualized what God had shown me that night was this: 10,000 youth groups over 10 years with disciple-making ministries. I told no one about that experience, but I prayed it back to the Lord for the next few months.  

Within a few months, I received my first opportunity to teach “the Son’s life” at the Moody Pastors‘ Conference. When Dr. George Sweeting heard of the vision God had laid on my heart, he asked me if I wanted to become of a part of the Church Ministries department at Moody, and I came on staff from 1980 to 1990 as the director of Sonlife Ministries at Moody.

In 1992 we had over 10,000 youth groups participating in a one-night evangelistic event called “See You at the Party,” hosted by Josh McDowell. We had over 1.5 million young people involved in over 54,000 simultaneous pizza parties with over 500,000 non-Christian friends! It’s estimated that in that one night, over 50,000 young people led one of their friends to Christ. God did it all as Isaiah 26:12 says, as it was His heart from the very beginning. And for some reason, I got to be a part of His plan. 

The 2024 theme for Founder’s Week is “Transformed: The Power of the Gospel.” Does a strongly Christian audience at a Christian conference still need to hear teaching about the gospel? Why?

Some like to speak of the “narrow” gospel and then the “expanded” gospel. The narrow gospel is that Jesus died on the cross, paid the penalty for our sin, and rose from the grave. Those of us who repent and believe are given the right to become children of God.

But the expanded gospel—some call it the full gospel—is much more. Jesus not only gave us the right to become His children, but the good news is that He also provides the way of sanctification and living. The Son’s life described in 1 John 2:6 is the model of how to walk as He walked and do what Jesus did as John 14:12 says. We constantly need to hear this good news. This gospel not only removes the penalty of sin but overcomes the power of sin. This is truly good news and life transforming!