David Nasser: Youth Ministry Visionary

David Nasser – author, minister, speaker – is the visionary behind D. Nasser Outreach (DNO), which allows him to speak to more than 700,000 people each year at revivals, citywide rallies, festivals, conferences, special events, camps, and concerts. Never concerned with building a big ministry or platform, David simply wants to present a relevant message of Jesus to a hurting world.
David’s work leads him to many speaking engagements, especially in youth ministry, even to the Ukraine through Student Life/Servant Life, where youth camps go to experience different cultures and work with other youth within these cultures. This is just one of the many events he participates in throughout the year.
David was born in an idyllic time in Iran in 1970. The country was enjoying a time of wealth and prosperity. His family was sophisticated, educated, and culturally Muslim. A world traveler by age 2, David had visited nearly every continent by the time he was a teenager. His early childhood memories are filled with happy times with his generous family and friends. He had everything a child would want.
But, as a 9-year-old boy, David’s world turned upside down. Every part of his normal life fell into chaos. His beloved homeland, Iran, was embroiled in a violent revolution. The international economy was in turmoil due to skyrocketing oil prices. David’s father, fearing for his family’s safety, decided they should flee the country leaving everything they owned behind.
November of that same year, 66 U.S. citizens and diplomats were taken hostage by a militant Iranian group. David and his family hoped for asylum in the United States, but the turmoil in the Middle East made immigration impossible. After almost a year in exile, David and his family were able to come to America.
“I have vivid memories of waiting every day to come to America,” David said. “It was like a longing to win the lottery. I watched my father work channels to make a way for us to get here. (During our exile) the whole time we were in Germany, and we didn’t want to be in Germany. We wanted to be in America.
“Here we were, an affluent Iranian family that now lived in low-income housing and had to watch every penny.
We had to consider things we didn’t have to think about before. Every day my sister and I would take the subway to the army base, where we attended a military school. We learned English while we were there, so I guess in a way this transition time was really a time of preparation.”
Yet life in suburban America (Alabama) brought its own set of difficulties. Different clothing, skin color, and his heavy accent made David an object of merciless taunting. For years, David never felt like he fit in. As a teen, he began to search for value and meaning through whatever his peers said was acceptable – cool clothes and nice cars, drinking and fast living.
David finally fit into American culture. He was invited to the right parties and hung out with the popular kids. But he was still empty inside. The acceptance and expensive possessions could not fill the void. A month after high school graduation, David visited a church in his hometown. As a cool 18-year-old, David believed church was not for him. After experiencing the unique acceptance and grace extended by friends who attended the church, David realized the peace and worth he desired was only found in a personal relationship with Jesus.
He saw a freedom from legalism in his new Christian faith, but rejecting his Muslim culture was not an easy choice for David, especially his family.
“(My parents’) first response was, ‘We’ll let it go and in two weeks he’ll be over it.’ They knew I had gone through many stages in life – tennis, guitar, surfing – so they thought, ‘Let him have a Bible. It’s just another stage.’
“What they didn’t realize at first was that this was a new identity for me. Within a few weeks, they saw the fruit and evidence of my conversion. That’s when things got hard. For my father, it was more about pride.
He’d lost his place in the (Iranian) army, his stature, and now because of his son, he was going to lose his faith. For the Muslim faith, converting is like looking back over your heritage and saying, ‘You’ve led me the wrong way all these years, so I’ve found another way.’”
In time, David’s parents and entire family came to know Christ themselves. Then, a few years later at a Christian camp, David met a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed, small-town Baptist girl. Jennifer and David were married two years later, not without both families wondering what had happened. Yet the couple believed their upbringings – as a Baptist and a Muslim – would be instrumental in creating a home of grace and acceptance. Now, part of the Nasser household of grace includes daughter, Grace (6), and son, Rudy (10).
DNO is growing in the areas of mentoring and consulting, working with ministries such as the Billy Graham Association, Youth Specialties, Student Life, and Acquire the Fire to assist other Christian leaders in their own ministry efforts.
David’s first self-published book, A Call to Die (2000), has sold more than 125,000 copies. On February 12, 2008, for the first time, A Call to Die released to retail (Word Distribution). A Call To Die is an intensive 40-day devotional journey of fasting from the world while feasting on God. Written with his candid and unrelenting passion, Nasser calls out to the reader who longs to answer the call of God, the call to die, while summoning the reader to dare define Christ’s radical call.