The Dakota Baptist Convention Executive Board voted unanimously on March 21 to call Lee Merck as its new executive director.
Merck, senior pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, is a Mississippi native who spent nearly 12 years as a pastor and church-planting catalyst in Montana through the North American Mission Board. He begins his new role June 1.
Merck graduated from William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, before earning his master of divinity with biblical languages from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2003. He continued his studies at Liberty University, graduating from the Rawlings School of Divinity in 2024 with a doctor of ministry with distinction in evangelism and church planting.
Ministry experience
Merck gained ministry experience in several churches during college and seminary. In 2013, he became the founding pastor for Church of the Rockies in Red Lodge, Montana. Beginning in October 2021, he was the lead re-planter and transitional pastor at The Church at Four Corners in Bozeman.
Several points of his ministry have included assisting churches that have gone through a difficult experience and need a time of recovery and refocus, he told BP. That requires skills in building relationships, something he has sharpened over the years and can be quite useful in the expansive and sparsely populated Dakotas.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Scott Barkley and originally published by Baptist Press.
