Baptist Press
Barrett Duke
BILLINGS, Mont. — Barrett Duke will begin in January 2017 as the new executive director of the Montana Southern Baptist Convention (MTSBC) after his near unanimous election to the post.
Messengers to MTSBC annual meeting Oct. 6-7 in Missoula elected Duke to succeed retiring executive director Fred Hewitt by a vote of 87 to 3, search committee chairman Bruce Speer said.
Duke, former vice president of the Washington, D.C., office for Public Policy and Research of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and director of the ERLC Research Institute, said this is “a good time to be a Montana Southern Baptist.”
Duke will lead the convention of about 135 churches in the state where less than 1 percent of adults are Southern Baptists and 38 percent of adults never or seldom attend church, according to the Pew Research 2015 Religious Landscape Study. Duke will serve as the MTSBC chief operating officer, the treasurer and chief financial officer, the official director of MTSBC work and ministries, the director and supervisor of MTSBC staff and North American Mission Board missionaries in the state, and the editor of the Montana Baptist electronic newsletter.
