ARLINGTON—For 38 years, Mission Arlington has existed to meet the needs of its community and “take church to the people,” founder and director of Mission Arlington Tillie Burgin explained.
Born in Arlington Aug. 24, 1936, Burgin recently celebrated her 88th birthday. But according to the Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex Facebook page, she “still arrives early 7 days a week, and leaves late, passionate about serving her Lord and this precious community.”
Burgin does not see Mission Arlington as an organization. Instead, she said, “It is a way of life.” Other times she described it as “a church” or “a family.”
Burgin explained the idea for Mission Arlington grew out of a question she asked herself that she just couldn’t shake, “If you can do missions in Korea, why can’t you do it here?”
How it began
The history link on Mission Arlington’s website, explains the question goes back to before she and her late husband, Robert, served as missionaries with the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board), teaching in South Korea.
Her father operated a gas station in Arlington, just around the corner from Mission Arlington. He was Methodist, but as he generally worked on Sundays, he rarely was in church.
He lived out his faith in serving his customers, but he was not on board with Tillie taking her two sons to move with her husband oversees.
He was the one who first posed the question, the mission’s history account explains. He saw no need for his daughter to head to South Korea. There was plenty to be done to care for people right in the family’s hometown of Arlington.
Burgin and her family went anyway. She said: “We didn’t fit then, either.” They were the first missionaries appointed through the Foreign Mission Board to serve as teachers, she explained.
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Citing God’s hand in the process, Burgin said IMB hiring personnel told her they would not have considered the Burgins’ application to serve, had a request for teachers in South Korea not just come across the desk the day they received it.
Plans for medical growth
In May, Texas Baptists presented Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex with $125,000 to expand their health clinic.
Burgin hopes the expanded clinic will make new types of care possible, but “the infrastructure has got to be strong, and that takes resources.”
Mission Arlington leaders are praying about how best to expand the clinic, Burgin said. They have had optometry equipment donated, but do not currently have an optometrist who can use it.
Hearing aid people come, but it’s only every six months. People are grateful when they can hear again after years of not being able to, but vision and hearing treatment are areas where they’d like to see an increase in their ability to provide care, Burgin said.
The clinic has an orthopedic doctor who regularly serves at Mission Arlington every Monday. She said no one goes through his office without hearing the gospel. “It could be me, and I’m going to hear it,” she laughed.
The holistic care Mission Arlington provides is a draw to interns and doctors, Burgin explained. Providers want to serve where they not only can treat a wound but can care for a whole person.
The health care providers are glad to serve knowing their patients’ nutritional and other needs also can be addressed through the mission’s other ministries, Burgin said. It just takes time, prayer and preparation to discern which expansions they are able to support best.
The clinic is always open six days a week and one evening.
Burgin told a story about a young man who came in for help wearing a hoodie in the heat of the summer. Under the hoodie, he had a large growth down to his shoulder that he didn’t want to show. It was interfering with his ability to have a job.
The doctor he saw through Mission Arlington’s clinic was able to remove the growth. With it gone, the young man was able to go back to school, complete school and find employment.
“People find themselves in that kind of trouble, and we always want to be that place for them,” their “home” health clinic. Burgin said.
Burgin explained she prayed about the vision God gave her about doing missions in Arlington for seven years, until she met a lady who needed help with her electricity bill.
“Standing in her apartment, I said: ‘Can we start a Bible study in your apartment? And we’ll get your electricity turned on.’” And the ministry has grown since then, Burgin explained.
There were more people outside the walls of the church than there were inside, Burgin explained. And she knew from their service in Korea that “hanging out” where the people were could lead to ministry opportunities, but she said: “I never had a vision for this. God had the vision, and he just said: ‘Come along.’”
‘God’s Timing. God’s ways.’
“You can’t explain it,” she added. “All you have to do is experience it—God’s timing, God’s ways.”
Burgin said God had protected them from “so many things she’d wanted to do” with Mission Arlington. And many times, they’d figured they’d “done all they could do,” then God would use the ministry in a new way.
For instance, they were given multiple pallets of bottled water a few weeks ago. She said they set it to the side.
“I said, ‘Something’s going to happen, if we’ve got all this water,’” she recalled.
On Sept. 4, they took 12 to 15 pallets of water to Grand Prairie to help when the city’s water was deemed unsafe due to a foaming agent.
“We are not an organization. It is a way of life,” Burgin said.
They’re still doing things the way they always have, she said—praying about the next ministry, giving people opportunities to serve and give back when they have been served, keeping John 3:16 front and center, taking church to the people.
“And our definition of church is what we do almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she continued.
Then her cell phone rang.
“Excuse me. Let me answer this,” she said.
The young woman on the other end, frantic because she couldn’t get her car started, said she didn’t know if she should call.
“Always call me, OK? Yeah, we’ll send somebody to you,” she said.
Burgin said she tells them: “Always call. And that’s kind of what we do.”
“Whatever it takes,” she said, “that’s what we need to do” to follow God’s calling.
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