The History of Mission: Possible! Austin

Mission: Possible! Austin started as a grass-roots ministry in 1992 when Tim Pinson Sr. heard the call of the Lord to minister to at-risk children living in the city of Austin.  At the time, he was raising support through Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF).  He and his wife Cindy decided that they needed to leave CEF and begin to raise support on their own to start the ministry.  Tim had visited another inner-city ministry in Texas and was inspired by programs such as back yard Bible clubs, done in the inner-city rather than suburban homes, and a ministry called Church Under the Bridge, a church service under a bridge for those living on the street.  He began to believe that something similar could happen in is hometown.

So, in the latter part of 1992, Tim began to gather volunteers and they would go into government funded housing developments and spend time with the children there.  At the end of that year, he and a number of college students spend three days on the street in Austin in order to experience what the homeless do on a day-to-day basis.  At the end of those three days, they held a church service and prepared 20 sandwiches for lunch.  Forty people showed up and that was the beginning of Church Under the Bridge (CUB) in Austin.

Over the next several years the attendance at CUB only grew and there was a great need for volunteers.  We were only doing services one time a month and the people were asking for more. Several local churches had begun to shown interest in helping out and we were able to go from one service a month to two and then to three.  Today, we have services every week for folks on the street.

Meanwhile, the children’s ministry was growing rapidly too.  Every time we went onto the housing developments, more kids would show up for the program.  It was at this point that the Austin Housing Authority said that we would have to stop coming in, so we set a meeting up with them to discuss the problem.  As the Lord would have it, there was a woman with the housing authority who was a believer and the LORD worked it out in such a way that she offered us the keys to every housing complex in Austin (a total of 18).  As the children’s ministries grew and more volunteers got involved we decided that we wanted to start a summer camp  for the kids during the summer, this was the beginning of the Nikos camping program.  Now we have four camps throughout the year and a wide range of at-risk children from housing developments all around the city participate.  On average, we influence over 200 children a year with the Nikos camping program.

Our most recent endeavor has been in community development at our community center located at 12th Street and Chicon Street. Since 2002 we have been building relationships with individuals and families in this community and hope that we can use those relationships to changes the face of Central East Austin.