Rev’d Canon Dr. Vinay K. Samuel BSc (Osmania), BD (UBS), MLitt (Cambridge), DD (Hon EBC)

Founder and past Executive Director of Oxford center of Missions Research Executive Director of The International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians, of which OCMS is the research and study centre.

Rev. Dr. Vinay Samuel, an Indian by nationality is a graduate of Union Biblical Seminary, Yavatmal, India, and holds a doctorate in Economics from Cambridge University, England, which he attended as the first scholar of the Langham Trust.

Rev. Samuel is recognized internationally as a development economist and theologian. In 1977 Dr. Samuel founded a program to equip development workers for the Evangelical Fellowship of India Commission on Relief (EFICOR). In its 27-years of innovative training, this three-month program has prepared hundreds of community development workers who now provide leadership to community-based development throughout India and South Asia

Dr. Samuel's commitment to equipping leadership in the field of development has grown into the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS), a training center for mission practitioners form the Global South. At present he is the Director of this Center, located at Oxford, in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Lamin Sanneh, D. Willis James Professor of Missions & World Christianity Yale University.

Lamin Sanneh, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is descended from the nyanchos, an ancient African royal house, and was educated on four continents.

He went to school with chiefs' sons in the Gambia, West Africa. He subsequently came to the United States on a U.S. government scholarship to read history. After graduating he spent several years studying classical Arabic and Islam, including a stint in the Middle East, and working with the churches in Africa and with international organizations concerned with inter-religious issues. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic history at the University of London.

He was a professor at Harvard University for eight years before moving to Yale University in 1989 as the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity, with a concurrent courtesy appointment as Professor of History at Yale College. He has been actively involved in Yale's Council on African Studies.

He is an editor-at-large of the ecumenical weekly, The Christian Century, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. He is an Honorary Research Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies In the University of London, and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He serves on the board of Ethics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama.

He is the author of over a hundred articles on religious and historical subjects, and of several books. For his academic work he was made Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor.

Rev. Jonathan J. Bonk, Ph.D. is executive director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, and editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

Before his relocation to the United States in 1997, he served as Professor of Global Christian Studies at Providence College and Seminary in Canada. He was raised in Ethiopia, where he and his wife also served as missionaries, 1974-76.

He is an ordained Mennonite minister, has served as president of both the American Society of Missiology and the Association of Professors of Mission, and is currently vice-president of the International Association for Mission Studies.

He is the author of numerous articles and reviews and has published five books, the best known of which is Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem (Orbis, 1991), now in its eleventh printing. A second edition is being prepared.

As project director for the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, a multilingual (English, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabic), electronic, nonproprietary reference tool, he travels extensively each year in Africa. He also serves as editor of the Encyclopedia of Missions and Missionaries, to be published in 2007 as Volume 9 in Routledge's Religion and Society Series.

Phil Lundman is president and general manager of Petersen Resources, LLC, Lundman Development Corp., and Lundman Family Foundation, Inc., and has a long involvement in teaching and leadership in local parishes.

Phil has founded and operated several businesses over the last 40 years and his family has funded numerous Christian missions’ initiatives especially supporting the church in areas of religious hostility. After being a life long Protestant Evangelical, Phil and his wife Nancy became members of the of the local Holy Rosary Parish at Easter of 2003 and they now teach the tenth grade CCD Bible class.

Nancy Lundman has been the General Manager of Lundman Development Corp. and the Springhill Apartment Complex for thirty years.

She is also active in Pro-Life and Respect Life initiatives, teaches the tenth grade CCD Bible Class, and has been active in managing the grant making decisions of Lundman Family Foundation.

She has for many years been active in leadership and teaching in the local church. Helping establish St. James Academy as an aid to the global churche, a priority of the Lundman Family.