About My Mentor, Avery Willis

My contacts with Avery Willis as I recall them can be divided into three stages.

Stage 1:

 About 1974 I was living in Singapore to develop the house church movement there. At that time Avery was president of the Baptist seminary in Semerang Indonesia. He invited me to come over and spend a couple of weeks with him. He had a few missionaries he assembled to train to write programmed learning materials. He had done great research and had compiled A little booklet that I think I still have but cannot locate after much searching. This was a  booklet that walked through all the stages of how a person learns, including the cognitive, affective,  and psychomotor domains. He also taught me the basic facts so I could write programmed learning material.  It has remained one of the most profound learning experiences of my lifetime and has influenced all my writing of training materials through the years.  I remember the many hours we sat on the veranda overlooking the river below and sharing our common vision of the changes that had to take place in the body of Christ. He was a godly, wise mentor and became a close friend.

Stage 2:

Avery and I reconnected through Dr. Roy Edgemon  when we were both writing and working with the church training department at the Baptist Sunday school board.  It was at this time I wrote the survival kit for new Christians, following his coaching and collaborating with A man who recommended who did the program learning segments of the book. He wisely counseled me about the problems I was making for myself by being overly outspoken about denominational politics. At this time I was writing A sequel to the Survival Kit and he gave me A suggestion that I took for the name, Life Basic Training.  I carefully followed his suggestions about how to create each division of that training manual.

At that same time, Avery was commissioned to prepare a discipleship series, MasterLife, for the Sunday School board and he retained me to write portions of it.  It was a great joy to help him as he pieced together what I gave him along with other writers as he put it altogether. It became the most valuable discipling tool the denomination has ever had.

Stage 3:

I learned that Avery had contracted cancer and had come to Houston to work with the hospital here. I quickly phoned him and began to visit him on a regular basis in his apartment near the hospital. These hours with him were very precious because at this stage he had discovered a cell group style of church that he felt was a final answer to the problems in Baptist circles. Once again, as in previous contacts, I had my notebook in my hand to jot down his many thoughts that shaped my further thinking.

So when I think of Avery, I remember him as a missionary on the field seeking to mentor those around him and shaping vital parts of my own future by what he deposited in my mind and heart. Then I recall the doors open for me, both in my mind and in the contacts he opened at the Sunday school board  related to becoming one of his writers.  Then I lovingly remember his courage as he slipped downhill in the recurring visits to Houston for treatment. His passion never waned in its intensity all the way to his home going.

I consider him among the five most important influences that have touched my life.