Ajith Fernando

Biography

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 in YFC are counselling, mentoring and teaching staff and volunteers. With his wife Nelun he is active in a Methodist Church just outside Colombo, most of whose members are recent believers. His grassroots ministry has been and is primarily with the urban poor.

Ajith has a wider counselling and mentoring ministry with Christian leaders and workers and a teaching ministry in conferences and theological schools in Sri Lanka and abroad. He is a visiting lecturer at Colombo Theological Seminary.

Ajith is an award-winning author of 16 books and several booklets and articles, and these have been published in 20 different languages. The Call to Joy and Pain was awarded the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award for church and pastoral leadership. Deuteronomy: Loving Obedience to a Loving God was released by Crossway in May 2012 and Reclaiming Love by Zondervan in April 2013. Acts in the NIV Application Commentary was published in 1998 by Zondervan. Ajith serves on the translation team of a New Sinhala Bible done by Biblica.

Ajith and Nelun have a son Asiri who is a singer-songwriter and Youth for Christ staff worker. His daughter’s Nirmali and daughter-in-Law Cheryl are YFC volunteers, and Nirmali’s husband Refuge is on YFC staff.

For relaxation Ajith likes to walk, listen to different kinds of music, read biographies and mystery stories, watch cricket on TV and play with his grandsons Avisha and Yasas.