Willis is perhaps best known for creating MasterLife discipleship materials while serving as the president of the Indonesian Baptist Theological Seminary in Semarang, Indonesia, was first commissioned an International Mission Board missionary to Indonesia, along with his wife, Shirley, in 1964.
Willis is perhaps best known for creating MasterLife discipleship materials while serving as the president of the Indonesian Baptist Theological Seminary in Semarang, Indonesia, was first commissioned an International Mission Board missionary to Indonesia, along with his wife, Shirley, in 1964.
During his service there, the Southeast Asian nation experienced a revival in which 2 million people gave their hearts to Christ. The large number of converts prompted Willis to pioneer innovative strategies for extension education and led the way in developing the prototype for what would become MasterLife. During the next 15 years as head of the adult discipleship department at LifeWay Christian Resources, MasterLife was translated into more than 50 languages and used in more than 100 countries.
Willis left LifeWay in 1994 to become the International Mission Board’s senior vice president of overseas operations. All totaled, Willis spent 25 years in missionary service, retiring from the IMB in February 2004.
Born in Lepanto, Ark., Willis served as pastor of three churches in Oklahoma and Texas before he and his wife began their missionary service. He is currently the executive director of the International Orality Network and on the board of Table 71, a strategic alliance of evangelical mission agencies.
Willis holds a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Okla., a master of divinity degree and a doctorate in theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. He and his wife live in Bella Vista, Ark. They have five children and 16 grandchildren.
Information from the 2007 Annual Church Profile for the congregation of which Willis is a member, Bella Vista (Ark.) Baptist Church, lists 18 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 450. The church reported $712,485.73 in undesignated receipts, $119,225 in gifts through the CP and a CP percentage of 16.73 percent. The church also received $24,345 for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and $8,408 for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.
Questions and Answers
Willis’ answers to
the questions posed by Baptist Press follow:
1) What has God done
in your life and ministry to prepare you to be president of the Southern
Baptist Convention?
He has saved me,
called me to preach and be a missionary and used me by the power of His Spirit
as a Southern Baptist in a variety of settings. Since you ask, I’ll list them,
but all the credit goes to God for whatever He has accomplished through me.
— Ten years’
experience pastoring three Southern Baptist churches in the U.S., one of
which I started and all of which saw growth in numbers, maturity and missions.
— Fourteen years as
a missionary in Indonesia, six years as a field evangelist/church planter and
eight teaching in the Indonesian Baptist Theological seminary, six of which I
was president. I led in an innovative theological education process that
increased the enrollment over five times to meet the need for pastors growing
out of 2 million people coming to Christ in five years in Indonesia, the
largest Muslim population in the world.
— Fifteen years as
the director of adult discipleship and family ministry [at what was then known
as the Sunday School Board] that included launching MasterLife (which has been
translated into more than 50 languages) and the LIFE (Lay Institute for
Equipping) courses, including Experiencing God, PrayerLife, The Mind of Christ,
Fresh Encounter and the LIFE Support Series. I have preached in most of the
state conventions and/or evangelism conferences. I led the Bold Mission Prayer
Thrust team that called for solemn assemblies for revival and helped lead them
with the SBC Executive Committee, 18 state conventions and the Southern Baptist
Convention in 1991) I spoke at all the seminaries as a member of the SBC
president’s Call to the Cross team that called for prayer and revival.
— Ten years as
senior vice president of overseas operations for the International Mission
Board, overseeing the work of over 5,000 missionaries plus 25,000 to 30,000
short-term mission volunteers each year. As a member of the three-man Senior
Executive Team, I led in the strategic New Directions overseas that saw
baptisms rise from 251,000 a year in 1993 to 609,000 baptisms last year and
from 2,000 new churches started per year to over 25,000 per year for the last
several years.
— I am currently
executive director of the International Orality Network and have been involved
in mission movements such as Bold Mission Thrust and AD 2000 and Beyond, and
currently strategically involved in Finishing the Task and Call2All all over
the world.
— During the
process, I have written 20 practical books with the aim of helping God’s people
be a people after God’s own heart who make disciples of all nations.
2) If you are
elected, what would be your priority message for Southern Baptists?
Southern Baptists
need a spiritual resurgence to become a people after God’s own heart who return
to Him in repentance, follow Jesus in discipleship and bring the Bible to life
through authentic lifestyles and actions, resulting in our telling God’s story
to people everywhere and making disciples of all nations.
3) What do you
believe is needed to see churches more effectively bringing people to Christ
and making disciples?
— We must have
revival and return to revolutionary first century discipleship. Jesus said,
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good.” (Matthew 12:33)
— We need to sow
abundantly, because as a people we have sown sparingly we are not reaping
abundant fruit.
— We need to sow where
Jesus sowed. He said that He came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor to
the poor, the prisoners, the blind and the oppressed. (Luke 4:18-19) Baptists
historically have ministered to the outcasts and disadvantaged, but as we have
become more affluent we sow more in people like us than unlike us. When we do
get the Gospel to the prostitutes, drunkards, the broken hearted, poor and
prisoners, they recognize it as really good news. We need to minister more to
these people and give a clear verbal witness when we do.
— We need to learn
to communicate with the 50 percent of the U.S. population that is
functionally illiterate. Churches are missing at least half the population that
doesn’t feel comfortable in our churches. We need to train our pastors in
narrative preaching and storying, as well as expository preaching that uses
effective life illustrations. We need to improve our communication styles with
post-moderns who grew up watching TV and movies and listening to music and
don’t want to read, although they can.
4) Decline/plateau
in membership, baptisms: What do you think the future holds for the SBC?
I believe the
conditions are ripe for a move of God among us that will make us a people after
God’s own heart and reverse the trends. I think the future is as bright as the
promises of God, if we will believe them and obey Him. If we don’t, we will
eventually become, as Dr. Jack Grey said, “a bloated carcass alongside the
road of history.”
5) Regenerate church
membership: To what extent do you see regenerate church membership as a
significant concern in the Southern Baptist Convention?
Unregenerate church
membership must be a concern for us when less than half our members attend
church on a given Sunday. Our shallow evangelistic methods and poor follow up
and discipleship have added many people to our rolls whose names are not
written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The larger question is what we do about it.
Several groups are presenting resolutions to the SBC this year to address this
concern.
6) Calvinism: Do you
see any reason for non-Calvinist Southern Baptists to be concerned about a
renewed emphasis on Calvinism in some Southern Baptist churches and seminaries?
We should be
concerned about any Southern Baptist that does not feel the responsibility to
share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone. Salvation is a work of our
sovereign God, but God uses humans as His instruments to share it with the
world. As a convention, we have never made Calvinism a point of fellowship or
cooperation. Calvinists are welcome partners in our Great Commission task. Our
point of concern should be with anyone who diminishes our responsibility to
make disciples of all nations.
7) The role of the
Baptist Faith and Message: What do you see as the proper role of the Baptist
Faith and Message when it comes to governing SBC entities and employees?
The current Baptist
Faith and Message is the product of the Conservative Resurgence and is a solid
consensus document. I think it is sufficient to guide us in our relationships
and our work. We don’t need to go beyond the BF&M confession to where there
is not a doctrinal consensus.
8) The IMB trustee
guidelines governing baptism and private prayer language in appointing
missionaries: Do you think their action was needed and appropriate?
I addressed the
sufficiency of the Baptist Faith and Message as our conservative consensus in
the last question. However, as a Convention we have given trustee boards the
right to set additional guidelines and policies for their work in their
specific contexts. You are addressing an issue voted on by trustees elected by
the SBC. As a former IMB administrator, I do not think it is appropriate for me
to rule on these policies that the IMB trustees made after a three-year study,
including a requested review by the convention. We should trust the trustees
and we have a process in place as a convention to address those concerns when
needed.
I think if there was
ever a need for us to focus on a lost world and revival in the SBC, America and the
world, it is now.
9) We hear reports
that God’s spirit is moving in astounding ways in many parts of the world, with
people being saved and churches being started so fast no one can keep track of
the numbers. Based on your missionary experience, what do you think keeps God
from moving in such remarkable ways in America?
Having been to
approximately 120 countries, I would affirm your statement about God’s Spirit
moving in astounding ways overseas. Let me pose the question like this,
“What are they doing in their situations to work with God to experience
phenomenal growth in numbers of churches and Christians that we are not doing
as well with here?”
Conditions are
different in every situation. There was a time when we saw phenomenal growth of
churches and membership in the United
States. However, missionaries and nationals
in their respective countries are doing many things that further that kind of
growth and avoid the things that hinder it. Here are some things we could learn
from them as we pray that God will pour out His Spirit on us as He has on them.
They are missional in their strategy, by which I mean they approach their
situations as missionaries and I think we need to do the same thing in the United States
if we are to reach the lost here.
— Prayer and the
absolute authority of the Bible are integral to their discerning where God is
at work.
— They research the
people groups and population segments and the study the culture in each
situation to understand their real needs.
— They devise
multiple strategies to reach them.
— They sow
abundantly and intentionally plant churches using local unpaid leaders.
— They communicate
the Gospel using stories and other visual and oral means as Jesus did and make
clear what it costs to become a real disciple of Christ. They teach them how to
deal with persecution when they become followers of Jesus.
— They involve new
converts immediately in initial discipleship and applied Bible learning.
— They focus on
discipleship in relational small groups in homes or other available places.
— They implant the
DNA of witnessing, making disciples and multiplying simple churches as rapidly
as possible.
— They coach
emerging leaders in the actual experience of doing the above.
— They involve
other Great Commission organizations who can contribute their expertise and
energy in appropriate strategies.
Here are some things
that they avoid:
— Dependency caused
by subsidy or dependence on outside leaders.
— Extra-biblical
requirements for leadership.
— Church models
that are not reproducible by the local people.
— Inappropriate
leadership training models for their situations.
So how do you sum up
what we are seeing on the mission field that we need to return to as Southern
Baptists? It is not a formula, for such movements come only from God. I believe
He wants a spiritual revolution of our 21st-century Christianity to become
first-century disciples afresh. Here are seven marks that we have seen in
Baptists when God used us most and I believe they are guideposts to God using
us again as a people after His own heart:
— Gazing on God’s
glory in worship.
— Returning to God
in spiritual renewal.
— Following Jesus
in discipleship.
— Bringing the
Bible to life through authenticity obedience.
— Telling God’s
story in evangelism.
— Making disciples
of all nations in missions.
— Starting churches
where we are not, through church-planting movements.
I wish I had space
to spell them out here and I will do that if elected president. My track record
in these areas and a concise plan of action for pastors and churches will be
posted soon on my website, www.averywillis.com.