WASHINGTON (ABP) — A former director of missions in Alabama is being nominated as executive director of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention.
If elected by the convention's board March 15, Ricky Creech, 47, would succeed Jeffrey Haggray, who resigned in 2009 after eight years in the post to become pastor of First Baptist Church in Washington.
Creech was director of missions of Birmingham Baptist Association in Alabama from 1995 until 2006. He left denominational work in 2007 to become a ministry consultant. He currently works as administrator on the staff of a Methodist Church in Decatur, Ga.
With about 150 churches, the D.C. convention is unique in its affiliation with three different denominational bodies: American Baptist Churches USA, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
The SBC cut off $475,000 in annual funding it had been providing for the D.C. convention in 2002, citing differences over theology. D.C. Baptists were forced to cut their budget by nearly a third. Currently the convention operates on an annual budget of $1.1 million.
Creech is a graduate of Furman University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was a church-and-community missionary in Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., for the SBC Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) before his election as executive director of the 135-church Birmingham Baptist Association in 1997.
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