Speakers

Ajith Fernando, Issiaka Coulibaly, Milad Dagher, Leung Ka Lun, Walter Perez, T.V. Thomas, Sunder Krishnan

Ajith Fernando

Ajith Fernando serves as Teaching Director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka after being National Director for 35 years. These days his main responsibilities are mentoring leaders and teaching staff and volunteers. With his wife Nelun he is active in a  Methodist Church, most of whose members are recent believers from other faiths. He ministers to Christian workers and others through a counselling and Bible teaching ministry in Sri Lanka and abroad. Ajith is a visiting lecturer and Council President of Colombo Theological Seminary and also serves as Visiting Scholar at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto.He has written 15 books and his books have been published in 18 different languages. The Call to Joy and Pain was awarded the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award for church and pastoral leadership. He serves on the translation team of a New Sinhala Bible.

Ajith and Nelun have a son Asiri and daughter Nirmali, both of whom are Youth for Christ staff workers, as is Nirmali’s husband Refuge. For relaxation Ajith likes to walk, listen to different kinds of music, read mystery stories and biographies and watch cricket on TV.

Issiaka Coulibaly

Rev. Issiaka COULIBALY is pastor of the C&MA in the Republic of Ivory Coast, since 1994. He completed his doctoral studies in theology at the ‘Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique de Vaux-sur-Seine’ in France, with a dissertation on ‘Intertextualité et Exégèse Biblique’. In the Alliance Church of Ivory Coast he held many different offices. The most recent are the offices of National Director of the Department of Education (2003-2007) and of President of the Board of the Bible Institute  in Yamoussoukro (IBTHAC, 2004 until now). Since September 1996, Issiaka has been teaching Biblical Languages and Old Testament at FATEAC. He is head of the Department of Old Testament, since 2000. He was asked by the Board of the school to conduct the transition, after the home going of Rev. Dr. Isaac KEITA. He is much interested in the dialogue between the Old Testament and African cultures, and also in the presence of Christianity in African contemporary society.

Issiaka is married to Elizabeth. They adopted a little boy by the name of Thierry William. Elizabeth is a teacher of French as a second language. She is very engaged in mentoring young fiancés as well as in teaching children in Sunday School.

Milad Dagher

Milad Dagher is serves in Beirut, Lebanon where he is the Director the Christian Alliance Institute of Theology (CAIT) and the senior pastor of the Christian Evangelical Alliance Church in Beirut (known as the Karantina Alliance Church). He has been lecturing at CAIT since 1989 in the fields of Old Testament and Systematic Theology. He is married to Anna who is an English teacher in an elementary school in the outskirts of Beirut. He has two sons, Mark (19 years), Michael (17 years) and one daughter, Nicole (15 years). Milad is currently a PhD candidate at Dallas Theological Seminary in the department of Old Testament studies. His research centers on the theology of holy war in the Old Testament. He believes that even though being called to serve Christ does not mean an easy life, it is the highest honour and considers being in the Middle East an opportunity to glorify Christ by seeing people saved through the power of the gospel and disciples trained to share the good news.

Leung Ka Lun

Rev. Leung Ka Lun (Ph.D) received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong majoring in Philosophy. Later, he went to Regent College to receive his M.Div degree. He has been the Executive Editor of Breakthrough magazine. In 1985, he joined the Alliance Bible Seminary of Hong Kong as the Director of the Publishing Department. Concurrently, he was the Director of the Center for Christianity and Chinese Cultural Research and the Associate Dean of academics. Currently, he is the Chancellor of the seminary and retains the Lau Fu Kwan Research professorship as Research professor. Rev. Leung has been in the Chinese theological education field for more than 20 years. He was also the consulting pastor of Alliance Yauoi Church of Hong Kong. Rev. Leung has been married with one son and one daughter. He has written about 60 books and the titles were about Bible, history, theology, preaching and essays.

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Walter Perez

Walter Eduardo Perez Doglio is an ordained minister of the CMA in Argentina. Presently, he serves as senior pastor of a growing church in Buenos Aires and as president of the Instituto Bíblico Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Bible Institute), the CMA seminary in the country. He has a M.Div. and M.Miss. from the Canadian Theological Seminary (now Ambrose University, Calgary, Canada), and a D.Min. and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Foundation (USA). Previous to his seminary training he received a LL.B. from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (National Litoral University in Argentina). He has been a bi-vocational minister for years, working as an attorney-at-law; also, he has ministered as an international evangelist for more than three decades and served as a professor at FATELA (Latin American Theological Alliance Faculty). This experience has helped him to obtain an overall glimpse of ministry within the Latin American continent. He is married to Estela. They have three grown children, Samantha, Jessica and Christopher.

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Sunder Krishnan

REV. Sunder Krishnan was born into an orthodox Hindu family in India and grew up in the capital city of New Delhi. He completed high school in 1961; graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1967; and received his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1969 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. In June 1969, he joined the staff of Atomic Energy of Canada. Most of his eleven years on staff were spent in safety analysis of nuclear generating stations.
Sunder Krishnan came to know Jesus Christ as his Saviour through the ministry of Youth For Christ in the city of New Delhi during his first year of undergraduate studies. He was active for several years with Youth For Christ in India. During his two years in Boston he was active with Campus for Christ.
Since arriving in Toronto, Sunder and his family have worshipped at Rexdale Alliance Church. His primary ministry was as an adult Christian Education teacher. He served as a member of the Executive Committee and then on the Board of Elders for eight years. In October 1980, Sunder resigned his position with Atomic Energy of Canada and joined the pastoral staff of Rexdale Alliance Church as the Associate Pastor. In this capacity he was responsible for preaching at all services. He was ordained to the Christian ministry in October 1982. When the Senior Pastor retired, Rev. Sunder Krishnan accepted that position on January 1, 1997 and has served in that capacity to date. In April 2000, he was given an honorary doctorate from the Canadian Bible College and Theological Seminary in Regina, Canada. Rev. Krishnan has been the featured speaker at the General Assembly of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, the General Council for the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the United States, Urbana 2009, and in several Bible Colleges, and numerous missionary conferences. In addition he has ministered to many missionaries and pastors overseas. In 1971, he and Shyamala were married. They have two married children, Vijay and Sheila and six grandchildren, Rebecca, Matthew, Benjamin, Noah, Joel and Gideon.

T.V. Thomas

T.V. Thomas was born in Malacca, Malaysia.  He attended Madras and Nagpur Universities in India. Besides being an active member of several civic clubs and cultural organizations, T.V. served with Asia Youth For Christ and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Sensing the call of God on his life for full-time vocational ministry, T.V. came to North America for theological training in 1971 and completed his doctoral studies in 1978.  He has served as a licensed evangelist of the Christian & Missionary Alliance since 1974 and was ordained in 1977.

From 1978 to 1994 he was on the teaching faculty of Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.  In 1984 he was appointed as the Professor of Evangelism for the Murray W. Downey Chair of Evangelism at both schools.  T.V. served as International Minister-at-Large with Every Home for Christ International from 1994 to 2000. T.V. is Director of the Centre for Evangelism & World Mission in Regina where he makes his home with his wife Mary and children Victor, Molly and Melanie. He is also an associate team member of the Canadian Revival Fellowship. His deep commitment to the cause of world evangelization calls for extensive national and international travel to minister at camps, churches, colleges/seminaries, retreats, seminars, conferences and consultations. T.V. has been a plenary speaker at large events like Urbana Student Missions Convention, Keswick Conventions, Mission Fests, Ethnic Ministries Summits and Promise Keepers Conferences. Dr. Thomas serves on numerous national and international boards and committees.

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