NASHVILLE (BP)–After a 15-year career at LifeWay Christian Resources, Mike Arrington, vice president of the corporate affairs division, has announced his retirement effective Feb. 1, 2007.
Arrington is the first to say that his mission at LifeWay, however, is not yet complete. He will remain as a consultant to the president, providing leadership to LifeWay’s “A Defining Moment” campaign and other capital resource and development efforts.
“I’ve said that in coming to LifeWay I stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before me,” Thom S. Rainer, president of LifeWay, said. “Mike has been a key leader in building LifeWay’s legacy over these past 15 years, and we owe an expression of gratitude to him.”
Arrington was an executive with Texas Utilities Electric Company when Jimmy Draper, then newly elected as president of the Sunday School Board, asked him to join his leadership team in December 1991.
“The executive of Texas Utilities told me that if it wasn’t what I thought it’d be, then come on back to Texas,” Arrington recounted. “But I knew God had called me to LifeWay for a specific purpose.”
Arrington pointed to four specific events in his LifeWay tenure that confirm God’s leading: a new name, an innovative style of products, a renewal of the conference centers and a campaign with global implications.
During Draper’s first year, he asked his senior leadership team to identify top strategic issues the Sunday School Board was facing. When Arrington made a case for changing the name of the agency to better reflect its work, Draper told him: “Not in my presidency” — thinking that was something that would never be accepted by Southern Baptists.
A few years later the issue was back on the table and Draper approved moving forward.
“Sunday School is only a portion of what we do,” Arrington said. “And we certainly weren’t a board. We needed something that identified us in a better way and portrayed us as the dynamic, multifaceted organization that we were.”
Arrington assembled a 19-member team to work on the name change.
“It actually took us about six months to get over the emotional trauma of what we were going to do,” he said.
The team of employees — also led by then-director of communications Linda Lawson — received about 450 recommendations from across the Southern Baptist Convention. The name LifeWay rose to the top.
“The reality of the word ‘LifeWay,’ coupled with the meaning of John 14:6 made it a great choice,” Arrington said. “The name change has given us Kingdom opportunities and positions us as a dynamic, caring organization working to impact lives.”
In 1992, Roy Edgemon and Avery Willis — icons of LifeWay’s discipleship training departments — approached Arrington with an issue.
They told Arrington God had given them a vision for a group of products that would impact people in a phenomenal way, and Arrington said it was immediately apparent that their idea would have a tremendous impact on individuals and churches. But no one had actively drawn together and empowered a collaborative team to make it happen.
“It was truly God’s plan and God’s timing that it be accomplished. It was [a] case of ‘We’ve never done it that way before,’” Arrington said.
After assembling the right people and giving them the mandate to walk through the development of the project, Life Support materials were birthed. The team also met Arrington’s insistence that the products be on the floor of the annual meeting of the SBC that summer, an unheard of timetable for product development.
This was the beginning of incredible changes in the undated materials at LifeWay, Arrington said, with the use of the LifeWay Press imprint for the Life Support materials which later became the name used for the larger family of resources, including Experiencing God.
In the mid-90s, Arrington saw that Glorieta and Ridgecrest Conference Centers had experienced decline and deterioration. For the next decade, he worked tirelessly to upgrade the conference centers and polish a tarnished reputation.
“With our name change to LifeWay, we broadened our customer base,” Arrington said. “But then we had to upgrade facilities, revamp our customer service and business management and then develop strong sales and marketing strategies to promote our quality programming.
“One of the best things I’ve been able to do for the conference centers is hire Byron Hill as national director,” he added. “Byron possesses great vision and a heart for ministry and I have such confidence in the way he will carry the conference centers into the future.”
Arrington said he agreed to remain with LifeWay as a consultant “to help Dr. Rainer and LifeWay achieve success in this campaign.” Arrington works alongside Draper, the campaign chairman, to cultivate relationships and spread the message of what the $29 million campaign is about.
“We’re planning to introduce the True Love Waits abstinence program into 30 African nations to save millions of lives; we’re producing a Bible translation by Chinese for Chinese — I am so excited to be focusing on this project,” Arrington said, also mentioning the campaign’s focus on international discipleship and leadership training. “The ministry opportunity and value of this campaign are enormous, and it positions LifeWay in a way it hasn’t been positioned before.”
With daughter Jenna and son-in-law Rob and three grandchildren in Tennessee, Arrington said he and his wife, Paula, will remain in Nashville. They also have a son, Blake, and daughter-in-law, Shawna, and a granddaughter in Brunswick, Ga.
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