Fifth candidate joins race for SBC president

Avery Willis

Within hours of Florida pastor Ted Traylor’s May 6 announcement of his intent to nominate Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt for Southern Baptist Convention president, a fifth candidate emerged from the shadows.

Hunt – along with fellow Georgian Frank Cox of Lawrenceville and Californians Bill Wagner and Wiley Drake – will now be joined by retired International Mission Board executive Avery Willis who has retired to Bella Vista, Ark.

Hunt is pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Cox is pastor of North Metro First Baptist Church in Lawrenceville; Wagner is a retired professor from Golden Gate Seminary, and Drake is an Orange County pastor and architect of the denomination’s Disney boycott.

A sixth candidate, Southern Seminary President and former Index Editor Al Mohler, withdrew earlier this year after colon surgery. The election will be held during the SBC annual meeting, set for June 10-11 in Indianapolis.

Willis will be nominated by John Marshall, senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Springfield, Mo. Willis, 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.

He worked as an evangelist and church developer for six years before transferring to the seminary in Semarang, where he served on faculty for two years and as president for six years.

During his service there, the Southeast Asian nation experienced a revival in which 2 million people accepted 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 the MasterLife disciplining process.

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.

“I don't know of anyone more loved and respected than Avery Willis,” Marshall said. “When someone first approached me about this, I thought, good grief why have we waited this long to do this? Creating MasterLife alone, because there is nothing quite like it, is enough for Southern Baptists to bestow this honor on Avery, but there is more. I’m glad that finally, in his retirement years, we have the opportunity to give Avery this honor.”

Willis left LifeWay in 1994 to become the International Mission Board's senior vice president of overseas operations during a time of expansion and strategy changes in the Southern Baptist missionary endeavor. 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. In addition to MasterLife, Willis served as associate editor of the Disciple’s Study Bible and either wrote or co-wrote nine other books including “On Mission with God,” a book he authored with a friend, Henry Blackaby.

He is currently the executive director of the International Orality Network 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 gave $119,460 through the Cooperative Program in 2007 according to the ACP, but the records did not indicate the church’s undesignated receipts.

Pastor Michael McCauley told Baptist Press that the church has provided updated information for the ACP, listing $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.