Trisha Miller Manarin
The District of Columbia Baptist Convention announced Monday (June 15) that Trisha Miller Manarin has been called to serve as its next Executive Director/Minister, the first woman to lead the convention in its 144-year history. DCBC’s Board of Directors voted to approve the search committee’s recommendation to hire Manarin during a regularly scheduled board meeting held last week. Manarin, who currently serves as Executive Coordinator at Mid-Atlantic Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, will be entering into her new position with the D.C. Baptist Convention on August 17, 2020.
The D.C. Baptist Convention historically was dually aligned with both the Southern Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches USA (previously known as the Northern Baptist Convention). In 1998, it added an affiliation with the Progressive National Baptist Convention. In 2018, the SBC cut ties with the D.C. Baptist Convention after the D.C. Baptist Convention refused to kick out a non-SBC church. Today, the convention includes more than 160 churches.
Manarin met her husband, Tim, while serving as a missionary in Zambia, and they have three children: Peter, Nathaniel, and Maggie. A native of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Manarin has a Bachelor of Music in Education and Performance from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. She has a Master of Divinity from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, now known as Palmer Theological Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania; and a Doctor of Ministry in Leadership Excellence from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Her doctoral project, Creating More Effective Clergy Teams: A Process for Senior Pastors and Associates to Grow Deeper in Their Call and Their Understanding of Each Other, assists clergy teams and enhanced her experience as the former Director of Supervised Ministry at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Virginia.
Ordained in 1997 by Trinity Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Philadelphia and in 2018 by the American Baptist Churches, USA, Manarin previously served as the Coordinator for the Division on Mission, Evangelism, and Justice at the Baptist World Alliance. She has been the Executive Coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, serving churches in Washington, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Northern Virginia, and West Virginia for the past six years.
Manarin will replace Robert Cochran, who has led the D.C. Baptist Convention since 2015.
NOTE: Learn more about Trisha Miller Manarin by listening to her interview on the Word&Way podcast “Baptist Without An Adjective” in episode 96 (Oct. 26, 2019).
