The Evangelical Alliance has appointed a new Churches in Mission Executive Director.

|PIC1|Dr Krish Kandiah, previously Director of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and Tutor in Evangelism at Wycliffe Hall, joined the Alliance at the beginning of the month.

The new Executive Director will be working in his new role to "inspire and support member churches and organisations in their ministry through networking, engaging with contemporary issues and exploring ways to enable congregations to discover a fresh love for the Bible".

Dr Kandiah said: "I am very excited about taking up this new position at the Evangelical Alliance. I believe that there are great opportunities for the church in contemporary Britain to faithfully and relevantly witness to Christ in word and deed, and I am looking forward to finding ways to do this together."

The former Wycliffe Hall tutor is an experienced church leader and has previously worked with students in the UK with the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, and in Albania with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. He is a regular lecturer and speaker at outreach and teaching events. He was also a member of the Oxford University Theology faculty.

Rev Joel Edwards, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance said: "We are delighted to welcome Krish to the staff of the Alliance. His experience as a local church leader, author and speaker will be invaluable as he will be encouraging and facilitating churches on the ground to live out their faith where they are."

Dr Kandiah, whose doctoral research at King's College London explored evangelism in a late modern context, has testified his desire to help the church relate relevantly and faithfully to contemporary culture.

An Alliance statement also revealed that Dr Kandiah is passionate about fresh expressions of church, biblical teaching, mission, social transformation and evangelism. The EA explains that he has been involved with a wide variety of churches from a free evangelical church in Warwick, a multi-cultural church in Harrow, a church plant in Tirana to an Anglican café-style church in Oxford.

As well as presenting the DVD resource 'Christian Life and Global Mission' (LBC Productions), he has recently published two books, '24 - integrating faith and real life' (Authentic 2007), and 'Destiny - what is life all about?' (Monarch 2007).