Dr. Buntain serves as director of the World Missions Center and associate professor of missions. Born and raised in Canada, Ian is a product of Southern Baptist missions. For the past 37 years, he has served as pastor, church planter, mission strategist, and seminary lecturer with the North American Baptist Mission Board and the International Mission Board. He has also served as the vice president of the Canadian National Baptist Convention, and as a board member for both the Malaysian Baptist Theological Seminary and the Singapore Baptist Seminary. Additionally, he established and led the Theological Training Initiative among East Asian Peoples and has taught cross-cultural evangelism and church planting in North and South America as well as in South, East, and Southeast Asia.

Ian’s deepest joy is found in the training and mentoring of men and women who feel called to live and serve in places of deepest gospel poverty and who are committed to reproducible missiological principles that are deeply rooted in Scripture.

He is married to Sherri, they have three children and seven grandchildren. Previously they served in Singapore, where Ian served as Lead Teaching Pastor of Grace Baptist Church.