Offering (Spiritual) Freedom to Prisoners

Bryan was in his 40s, married with three children, and teaching carpentry at a suburban Chicago high school when he began the Urban Studies master’s program at Moody Theological Seminary in 2003. “It was such a great program. It gave me the tools I needed to minister in a jail and to street people,” he said.

Attending Moody was a natural choice for him. Bryan already had an established relationship with Moody dating back to 1976 when a Moody student named Frank Baron invited him to church to see an evangelistic film called A Thief in the Night. Bryan was 19 years old when he placed his faith in Christ that evening.

Eager for round-the-clock encouragement from God’s Word, Bryan started listening to Moody Radio in 1992 on his commute to his teaching job.

“Now it’s going all day long on my Alexa and in my car,” said Bryan, who has been giving to Moody directly from his credit card each month since he became a listener.

After graduating from Moody in 2008, Bryan served as staff chaplain at Cook County Jail from 2010 to 2015. Also a Gideon and member of Chaplains for Christ, Bryan would bring in a case of Bibles and New Testaments, and the inmates would often fight over them.

“They were so hungry for the Word of God,” he said.

Bryan would also visit men in every cell block, going from chuck hole to chuck hole to talk and pray with them. “They had a lot of questions,” he noted.

Upon retiring from teaching carpentry in 2017, Bryan immediately enrolled at Moody again, earning a second master’s degree in Spiritual Formation and Discipleship in 2022. He loved the capstone class, with its basis on training disciples who make disciples who then make disciples.

“I’m trying to use that model as I get back into the Cook County Jail system,” he said.

Currently he serves as a chaplain in medium security, where detainees await a court date that can sometimes take years. If found guilty, they are sent to a state prison.

“If I can train, say, four or five guys, and then they train four or five, and we keep multiplying disciples, we could get discipleship groups in all the penitentiaries throughout the state.”

Each week, Bryan fills a backpack with Bibles and leads a small group Bible study at the jail. “The main thing is I always carry Bibles every time I go in there,” he said.

Sometimes he also arranges for books to be sent. Recently a Christian inmate he’d worked with in 2010 wanted to start a book study in a state prison. Moody donated a dozen copies of two different books, including Eternity by Dr. Joseph Stowell (Moody Press). The man was thrilled to start his book study with other inmates.

Bryan is thrilled to continue giving to Moody. “Moody is a name you can trust,” he said. “Sometimes you give and you worry—is that money really going where it needs to go? I really trust Moody. The money is going to go for ministry, for reaching the lost, for training students to minister to others. I really love the school and their ministry. I want to give to them as long as I can with as much as I can.

“I love Moody. I would do anything for Moody. If I wasn’t so old, I’d go back for a third degree, but I have the two.”