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Leadership Bios

 

The Lausanne Committee is blessed to have capable leadership drawn from around the globe. The movement is led principally by an Executive Chairman and an International Director, assisted by International Deputy Directors in each region of the world.

Executive Chairman

Doug BirdsallDoug Birdsall was installed as the Lausanne Chairman in 2004 at the Forum on World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand. Doug and his wife Jeanie have been missionaries with Asian Access since 1980, where Doug was president of the mission from 1991 to 2007.  He is a graduate of Wheaton College, Gordon-Conwell Seminary and Harvard University and is currently involved in doctoral research at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
 
Birdsall’s involvement with Lausanne began in 1987 when he participated in the first Lausanne Younger Leaders conference in Singapore. Two years later, he served as the assistant to the Director for Lausanne II in Manila. “Those early experiences with Lausanne,” says Birdsall, “served to broaden my horizons and deepen my understanding of the challenges and opportunities before the Church. My deep commitment to the revitalization of the Lausanne Movement springs from my sense of indebtedness to Lausanne for connecting me to a global network of men and women who share a passion for the vision of ‘the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.’”

International Director

Lindsay BrownLindsay Brown studied history at Oxford and theology in Paris. From 1976-1978 he served with Operation Mobilization, spending two
years on board the Logos. He then joined the staff of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF), working among students in his native Wales.

From 1983-1991 Lindsay served as Europe and Eurasia Regional Secretary for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), based in Paris; these were years of unparalleled change in Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1991-2007 he served as IFES International General Secretary. Under his leadership, new national movements were established in over 50 countries. He worked with his team of Regional Secretaries to build a stronger infrastructure to support the younger movements, and established a donor base for a new $6m budget.

He now trains university evangelists in Europe for several weeks a year. As International Director for The Lausanne Movement, Lindsay oversees 11 regionally-based deputy directors. He works closely with Doug Birdsall, Executive Chairman, in casting vision
for the future of the Movement as well as in planning for Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne Congress.

Lindsay is author of Shining Like Stars: The power of the gospel in the world’s universities (IVP), published in 2006. He is married to Ann and they have one son. He lives in Monmouth, Wales.

Congress Director, Cape Town 2010

Blair CarlsonBlair Carlson was appointed as Cape Town 2010 Congress Director in 2006. Blair spent the first eighteen years of his life in Hong Kong where his father taught at a seminary and his mother led a women's ministry and served as a nurse at a missionary clinic.  While studying for his BA in art and anthropology at Wheaton College, Blair worked for Wheaton Travel, a Christian agency that arranged the travel for the World Congress on Evangelism held in Lausanne Switzerland in July 1974.  It was at the travel desk in Lausanne that he was introduced to Billy Graham, which in turn led to a ministry of twenty-six years organising Billy Graham evangelistic missions in many countries around the world. 

In 2000 he and his family moved to England, where he studied theology and was ordained an Anglican minister.  He served the Parish Church of Hailsham, England, as assistant minister for three years until his return to Minneapolis where he is associated with Church of the Cross, an Anglican Mission in American under the Archbishop of Rwanda. 

He recently founded GoodWORD Partnership, a ministry devoted to serving indigenous evangelists from a variety of countries. It is with this strong commitment to indigenous evangelism that he serves as Congress Director for Cape Town 2010, the third Congress on World Evangelisation sponsored by LCWE.  Blair lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Elizabeth, and two daughters, Megan (14) and Ellie (9).