Happy Birthday, Mission Arlington®
Mission Arlington® turns twenty nine (29) today. We are in our 30th year.
On August 1st, 1986, Tillie Burgin answered God’s call to reach her city for Christ. Hired by First Baptist Church Arlington as the church’s Minister of Missions, Tillie responded to an emergency call within hours of her first day on the job. A single mom living in an apartment community on Arlington’s north side was living in the Texas heat without electricity.
The electric bill was paid, and that community became the site of the first Bible study started by Mission Arlington®. Seventeen (17) people, dressed in blue-jeans and tennis shoes, attended the very first study. Today Mission Arlington supports and sponsors Bible studies in 349 locations across our community. People come “just as they are” to discover the Lord. Thousands of people attend each week. Mission Arlington® loves and values “taking church to the people.” (Read more about our history here, or here.)
Tillie Burgin, former Missionary, school teacher, and personnel director for the Arlington ISD, has been at the helm of Mission Arlington (under God) for 29 years.
As people spread out across the community to share their faith, many in the community couldn’t hear, because there was a certain level of hurt and heartache all around which blocked the message. Tillie knew that they couldn’t turn from human need, or just hope that people got some help. They needed to do something now. “One life at a time,” the mission began responding to human need with real and practical help. Today, approximately six hundred people each day, six days a week, come through our front doors. These are ordinary, working people who have had a health crisis, a job loss, or the unexpected breakup of a relationship which tumbles them into our front door.
Through the years, the ministry has grown. Today, the Mission offers medical and dental services, basketball, baseball, and wrestling leagues for children and youth, free summer camps,transportation to and from school or job interviews, a free Christmas store, and so much more. In 2014, for example, the Mission recorded more than 355,000 ministry touches just in one year. From one church sponsor in the beginning, support has grown to include many churches from all across our community. We are grateful.
Our heart, on this special day, desires as much as anything, to express our gratitude as clearly and deeply as we know how – to each of you – for the way you pray, give, and serve here. We couldn’t do it without you. Mission Arlington® has a reputation for being generous, because you were generous first. When you give, we are able to give it away. We wish you could see what we see on a day-by-day basis – when people receive what they most need, because of you. We especially want to thank you for your prayers.
Having said this, our deepest and most consistent prayer is that our Lord will be pleased with the offerings of our hands and hearts in this place and throughout the community. Mission Arlington®
is more a movement than a strategy, more a spirit than a structure, more like a family than an organization. It’s not about religion, and it is as much about God as it is about people. God has done something amazing here, and He has done it in His own time and in His own way.
Mission Arlington® belongs to God. This isn’t our story, but His. He had plans in place for this Ministry and for all who work here long before it happened. He started this mission, sustains us moment by moment, and He holds our future in His hands.
We are grateful to each and every one who has walked this journey with us. Together, we will serve Him into the future, one day at a time. Praise His Name!
