Tillie Burgin, Executive Director, Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex

In her early-morning devotions at 3:30 a.m. on a recent day, Tillie Burgin, executive director of Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex, was reading in the eighth chapter of Ecclesiastes. Speaking later that day at a church luncheon, she commented on the Scripture passage: “It basically tells us no one can understand all that God is up to.” That is definitely true at the mission she founded, now in its 21st year of doing God’s business. The magnitude of what God is doing there and the way he brings things about is truly amazing.

Arlington, Texas, in the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, has some well-known attractions. Its skyline is dotted with the huge Six Flags Over Texas roller coaster, the castle-looking stadium of baseball’s Texas Rangers, and now under construction, the Dallas Cowboys’ enormous new stadium — the largest domed structure in the world. Another well-known location in the city is Mission Arlington, a small complex of buildings, the core of which was once a small drive-in bank downtown.

Mission Arlington actually brings in more visitors to the city than the Texas Rangers. During the years 2003-2006, for instance, 22,349 volunteers across the United States went to Mission Arlington to help provide all kinds of services. And many other people from churches across the nation travel there daily to observe how Mission Arlington does what it does so they can go back and replicate the mission and its programs in their own cities.

Founded in 1986, their mission is that everyone coming to Mission Arlington will hear the Gospel and have an opportunity to respond to it. And thousands of people have responded and become believers in Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Happy children and a volunteer at a Mission Arlington summer camp 2007

Tillie’s day at the mission usually starts around 3:30 a.m. and ends around 11:00 p.m. — seven days a week. She’s in her early 70s, thin, full of energy, and always smiling and hugging people.

She sums up the people coming through the Mission Arlington doors for help. “Everyone we encounter each day is someone important to God. We’ve never met anybody we could throw away.”

Jimmy, a volunteer at Mission Arlington, comments on the way Tillie treats people. “I saw her out in the parking lot one day talking with a volunteer, and then a needy family came up to speak to her, and the assistant mayor walked over to talk to her. She treated the family and the volunteer just like they were the mayor.”

From her early years, she was on the receiving end and knows what it’s like to be treated in a special way and have someone make a connection. As a young bride, Tillie’s role model was the director of the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) organization at her church, First Baptist Church Arlington (FBCA).

A shopper and a volunteer at Mission Arlington's 2007 Christmas Store

“We didn’t have much money, so I tutored after school and took in ironing,” she recalls. When Tillie couldn’t afford to take a covered dish to a church gathering, the WMU director took one for Tillie. “She was wealthy, but she made me feel we were the same and made me feel like I was her best friend. She connected with me.”

Tillie surrenders

Tillie Burgin didn’t set out to be a missionary. She grins when she says that in fourth grade she decided she wanted to grow up to be a pilot and fly a bomber. She also confides, “I loved activities and wasn’t always the best listener.”

She attended Sunday School, memorized Bible verses, read books, and says she “tried to live according to what was right and wrong.” The wrong apparently got the best of her at times … she taught herself to stutter to get out of doing some things and not have to answer questions in school.

Her father, Erman Lester, who operated a Gulf service station in Arlington, nicknamed her Tillie, from the cartoon “Tillie the Toiler,” a comic strip about working women, which debuted in January 1931. Ironically, she grew up in a home across the street from FBCA and a block away from where Mission Arlington is now located.

At age nine, she was saved and, at the invitation after a particular sermon, she recalls feeling “a strong sense of the Holy Spirit to make public my decision about accepting Jesus Christ.” Her relationship with Christ became even more real later. “I was 15 years old, sitting in church, and looked at the cross over the baptistery. I sat frozen on the front pew as I realized Jesus died for me.”

Later that year, she felt the Lord was calling her to go into missions. “God revealed the path he wanted me to take.” Tillie stopped stuttering to become a missionary. But it wasn’t a smooth path, and there were some delays as she later struggled with the calling.

Serving in Korea

She met Bob Burgin at college in Texas, and they married within a year. They both had degrees in secondary education. But Bob was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1958 and sent to Korea. Tillie also went to Korea as soon as she received her diploma. A group of Methodists sponsored her to teach at a Methodist school in Inchon, Korea. She lived in the Methodist mission and taught English to high school age boys. Bob was a radio operator and stayed on the ship.

She vividly recalls the scene a year later, when they were returning to the United States at the end of Bob’s tour of duty. “We were at the ship ready to leave, and the boys from the school shouted to me, ‘Who’s going to come and tell us about Jesus now? Please tell Americans we’re not so bad. Please send someone to us.’ I told them I would.”

“On the day we arrived in Arlington from Korea, I was asked to speak to a group and told the story about what the boys said as we left. Then and every time I was a speaker somewhere and told the story, God kept saying to me, ‘What’s wrong with you being the one?’ So I quit speaking.”

She and Bob took teaching positions in the Arlington schools. But the Lord continued tugging at her heart. She finally prayed: “Lord, if this is from you, OK. But it has to come from Bob because he’s the head of the household.”

Shortly thereafter, Bob asked his wife, “Have you ever thought about us going back to Korea as missionaries? Have you felt the Lord’s calling for that?” Tillie told him, no, she hadn’t felt that calling.

She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head, recalling that denial. She admits, “I was scared. And I had two little kids by then.”

But she obeyed the Lord’s calling and in 1966 Tillie and Bob with their sons Jim and Rick returned to Korea as Southern Baptist missionary teachers. They were the first full-time missionary teachers appointed by a mission board.

While in Korea, the Berlin Crisis happened and Bob was called back into the Army. Then after five years of service in Korea came a furlough back home to Texas, where their son Rick had brain surgery. They returned to Korea, but his health problems continued; so they left Korea and missions work and took positions in the Arlington School District again.

The “Church Lady”

Tillie Burgin

The Burgins were attending First Baptist Church Arlington when Pastor Charles Wade in 1986 decided to try to start a benevolence and apartment ministry to hopefully draw people to the downtown church. The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) at that time had a program providing financial assistance to churches that hired a minister of missions, committed to start six missions and that would provide $14,000 to complement the BGCT’s commitment. Tillie became Minister of Missions at FBCA.

Her son Rick says originally there was no structured plan for Mission Arlington. Tillie drove to various apartment complexes. She hung around, talking to people, getting to know them, finding out their needs, and staying focused on John 3:16.

One day she used the church’s benevolence fund to help a woman in an apartment who could not pay her electric bill. Then she asked the woman if she would allow Tillie to have a Bible study in the apartment. It was definitely not a typical “church.” The woman had no furniture and, although Tillie found a college student at FBCA who was willing to teach the Bible study, she had never done anything like that before. Tillie eased the student’s fear, saying probably no one would show up. That Sunday 17 people were there; some of them heard for the very first time that God loves them. The woman’s two daughters later became Christians and were baptized in the apartment swimming pool.

Tillie also took the Gospel and church to homeless people living in cardboard boxes next to the train tracks. She became known around town as “the Church Lady.” he took church to the places where people live, especially the kind of people who couldn’t drive to church or wouldn’t feel comfortable in a typical church.

Soon, Tillie had established six Bible studies/churches, and the word spread about the positive impact and more wholesome behavior in those apartment complexes. By the end of the first year, Mission Arlington volunteers were conducting Bible study groups (church) in 30 locations. Today, there are 264 such congregations around the city.

Front entrance to Mission Arlington

When people working at Sam's volunteered to help at Mission Arlington, they realized the storeroom shelves were not sturdy enough for the donated food and subsequently donated and built shelves the same as those used in Sam's stores

In addition to the many Mission Arlington congregations around town, approximately 500 people a day show up at the Mission Arlington downtown headquarters for assistance. Rick explains that 95 percent of them are not homeless people. “They’re poor and living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to pay increasing bills, or they just lost their jobs or are in similar situations. We pray with everyone and find out their needs. We establish trust and a relationship with them when we meet their needs so we can share Jesus with them. When they see us at the church groups around town, they already know and trust us.” Then we provide church where they live.

Rick began his ministry at Mission Arlington in 1992. He had earlier worked for a for-profit counseling organization and in a psychiatric hospital and has an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy. They don’t provide therapy or counseling at Mission Arlington, but Rick networks with doctors to provide free services and does some crisis intervention.

Rick Burgin

“We do no fund-raising,” states Debbie Musgrave, Tillie’s personal assistant, who has worked at Mission Arlington since it was established. “We leave it in God’s hands to provide for the needs. And God’s plan works!”

As if the daily ministries happening throughout Mission Arlington were not extraordinary enough, its volunteers came together to help 11,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, who ended up coming through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Mission Arlington was a main source for clothing, medical services, and helping people get connected with and move on to their families. “You couldn’t drive through the parking lot,” recalls Debbie. “The piles of donated clothing, bedding, and other items we sorted through were as high as the roof of the building.”

Volunteers sorting and organizing clothing, household goods, and other items donated to Mission Arlington

Debbie meets with Tillie every morning at 5:00 .am. to discuss the plans for the upcoming day. Volunteer transportation drivers also arrive at that time, as well as people in the medical clinic. By 6:00 a.m., the drivers are taking people to work from the homeless shelters; then they do the school runs from shelters and motels. Then they take teens with children to school and take their children to daycare. Arlington is the largest American city without a public transportation system. Other drivers take the elderly to doctor appointments. Still other volunteers paint and repair bicycles for people without cars to get to a job, and some volunteers who are mechanics work on the fleet of vehicles donated to Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex.

Medical clinic at Mission Arlington

Like the transportation services, all the ministries at Mission Arlington developed over time in response to people’s needs.

God’s business

A wall in Tillie Burgin’s office is full of dozens of impressive awards and recognitions. On the 20th anniversary of Mission Arlington, the Arlington City Council proclaimed August 1, 2006 as Tillie Burgin Day. In 1999, then-Governor George Bush and the State of Texas 76th Legislature proclaimed a Senate Resolution commending her for creating such a great success.

But she doesn’t view the big picture the same way as others and doesn’t get caught up in the accolades. She says, “God put this ministry here to serve him. This is God’s business, and there are people still not saved.”

Does anything bother her? She doesn’t hesitate when she answers this question. “Yes, if someone misunderstands something we do or if we’ve inadvertently said something that wounded someone, or if the day ends and there’s a life hanging out there.” She adds: “Why don’t more people care about lost souls?”

She takes nothing for granted. At night when she finally gets into bed, what’s on her mind is: “Did we do everything we could today?”

She describes the team at Mission Arlington as “in it for the long haul. We’re like what Billy Graham once said: ‘A few of us got together and decided to grow old together.’”
Her advice to others on how to start an organization like Mission Arlington is to “First, pray. Then find someone in your church who has a sense of reaching the unsaved and reaching outside the walls of the church.”

“When Charles Wade prompted me to try it for a year, no one knew what it would be. God did the rest.”

For more information about Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex, visit http://www.missionarlington.org.