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NO TRANSLATION AVAILABLE 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 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 Brown was appointed International Director in 2006. A native of Wales, Brown served with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) for twenty-five years, fifteen of them as International General Secretary. Lindsay was followed as IFES General Secretary by Daniel Bourdanné, Lausanne International Deputy Director for Francophone Africa.Brown began his journey in missions on board Operation Mobilization’s MV Logos ship in Africa. He says his voyage to eighteen countries “gave me exposure to the wider world and fired my passion for mission.†After returning from Africa, Brown served with the IFES-related student ministry in Wales and was also involved with the Welsh Lausanne Committee. In 1981, Brown and his wife moved to Paris where they studied together at Vaux-sur-Seine Theological Seminary under the tutelage of Henri Blocher, then chairman of the French Lausanne Committee. Following his studies, Brown was appointed European Regional Secretary for IFES, coordinating student ministry across the continent. He became International General Secretary in 1991. Brown’s tenure was a time of tremendous expansion for IFES. The organization extended its ministry from one hundred countries to 150. Their budget grew from $1.3 million to $5.9 million. In 1991, 275,000 students were linked with IFES; today the number is 400,000.
Lausanne has been enriched by its partnership with IFES since 1974. A number of key Lausanne leaders were shaped by its ministry: John Stott, Chua Wee Hian, Samuel Escobar, René Padilla and Gottfried Osei-Mensah to name a few. The Programme Director for Cape Town 2010, Ramez Atallah, was previously IFES’s Regional Secretary in the Middle East. Brown’s role as Lausanne International Director will further strengthen the relationship between the two movements.
Birdsall says Brown is “trusted and respected around the world as a servant leader and as a man of exceptional vision. Lindsay brings energy and passion along with a depth of understanding of the world scene like few people in the world today. We are delighted to have him as the new International Director for the Lausanne Movement.
 Blair 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). |
