Christianity Today

In 1989, Ajith Fernando returned to his Sri Lankan home from a six-month sabbatical at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts. "It was heaven," he says of the time away.

Sometimes referred to as "the Asian John Stott," Fernando loves quiet study. The seminary offered an excellent library and very few of the interruptions that constantly occur at home in Sri Lanka. He wrote two books, Crucial Questions about Hell and Reclaiming Friendship: Relating to Each Other in a Frenzied World. Besides studying and writing, he taught from the Bible in many locations, and in his spare time he taught himself to type on a computer. His wife, Nelun, and two children, Nirmali and Asiri, were with him. It was a happy, busy, secure time.

Fernando returned to a nation at war with itself. Right in the heart of the capital, Colombo, not far from his home, he saw corpses floating in the murky Kelani River—bodies of young men he had tried to reach through his organization, Youth for Christ (YFC). At home or at the office, he met desperate family members seeking their missing sons.

Schools were closed, and public transport shut down. As Fernando drove the dingy, pothole-ridden streets, people would lean into his car window and ask for rides. He usually took them where they wanted to go, even knowing that if the police found that his riders were terrorist Tamil Tigers, he himself would be killed with them.

Many hours of each day went into driving YFC staff to and from their homes—Fernando hates driving—and the staff, too, were subject to accusations of terrorism. Why else would young people from different ethnic groups be gathering?

Angry young people bombarded YFC with despairing complaints. At a long, late meeting, the leadership hammered out a statement to the government. For many nights after sending it, Fernando woke up to some noise in the night, thinking that the police had come for him.

Friends and ministry colleagues were leaving the country, and for good reasons: their careers could not advance, their children could not get an education, their lives were in danger. Despairingly, Fernando watched the departure of Christian leaders.

One day a letter from Gordon-Conwell was handed to him as he stood in one of the open rooms of the YFC office. Fernando opened it and stared at the stiff, expensive paper and its sharp black lettering. The letter said the faculty of Gordon-Conwell had voted unanimously to offer him a position, and it outlined terms. He would make far more than the $500 a month YFC paid him. A light teaching load would allow time for writing and preaching.

He had not asked for the position, had not even imagined it, but it represented everything he dreamed of: To escape the harsh violence and paranoia of Sri Lankan life. To have all his hours dedicated to the things he loved: studying God's Word, writing, teaching, and preaching. To give his children all the education they could want.

Fernando lifted his eyes from the letter to find YFC colleagues watching, curious as to what so engrossed him.

Attuned to the Poor

Fernando is a tall, quiet man with light brown skin. His face is unexceptional except for large, sad, gleaming eyes, attentive to everything. He can remain almost silent—he has no gift for small talk—and yet his eyes speak.

He grew up among the Sri Lankan elite, his father heading the government's taxation bureau. It was a highly influential position. His family belonged to the Sinhalese, the ethnic majority that has dominated Sri Lankan politics since independence from the British in 1948. Fernando attended private schools with some of Sri Lanka's leading citizens, becoming part of the tiny minority who qualified to attend university, studying biology. English was his first language, even though hardly any ordinary Sri Lankans speak it.

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