Several State Conventions Name

Several State Conventions Name New Executive Directors in 2021

State Conventions in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Nevada all welcomed new executive directors since early 2021, beginning with Texas in February.

The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) Executive Board voted unanimously to confirm Nathan Lorick as the SBTC’s second executive director Sunday, February 21.

Lorick succeeds Jim Richards, who has served as the convention’s executive director since its founding in 1998. Richards announced his retirement in November of 2020.

“I never thought it would be possible to be able to follow your hero,” Lorick said. “I am forever changed because of you two (Richards and his wife, June). I still have a lot to learn. You’ll be on speed dial.”

For Lorick, who has served as executive director of the Colorado Baptist General Convention since 2017, the new role heralds a return to Texas and the SBTC, where he served as evangelism director from 2012-2017. Prior to that, he served in multiple Texas Baptist churches as a student pastor and interim pastor and as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Malakoff and Martin’s Mill Baptist Church.

Lorick began his work as SBTC executive director April 1 and Richards will continue in an advisory role through the remainder of 2021. He and his wife Jenna live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with their four children.

Todd Unzicker, chief of staff at The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, was elected executive director-treasurer of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina on May 22, 2021. Unzicker succeeds Milton Hollifield who had held the position for fourteen years before his retirement earlier in 2021.

Unzicker, 44, served on staff at The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, since 2012 and worked closely with The Summit’s lead pastor, J. D. Greear, during his tenure as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Unzicker said he wants to see the Convention “connect churches to relationships and resources that fuel mission partnerships across the state and around the world.”

“The church is God’s plan A for reaching the lost world,” Unzicker said. “In the kingdom of God, there are no small churches. There’s only the Great Commission. . . . We’re going to do together what might be more difficult to do by ourselves.”

Unzicker has been married to his wife Ashley since 2007. They have three children and reside in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

In a called meeting of the Ohio Mission Council this June, Ohio Baptists elected Jeremy Westbrook as executive director-treasurer of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio (SCBO). Westbrook succeeds Jack Kwok, who retired in 2020, and began the new role August 1.

He had been serving as the senior associate pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida, since 2017. In 2018, Westbrook began a joint position as lead missional strategist of the Suncoast Baptist Association. In that joint leadership role, he helped mobilize Suncoast churches for church planting and revitalization.

“I believe we have the greatest pastors, the greatest leaders, and the greatest opportunity to advance the kingdom in the state of Ohio,” Westbrook said. “Ohio matters more than just every four years in the presidential election; it matters in the advancement of the kingdom.

“I long to see the day where all of our churches in the Ohio convention and throughout the Midwest are filled with multiplication pipelines. Every church, no matter the size, can develop and implement a pipeline to raise up and release leaders for the next generation of Gospel impact. I believe Ohio has the kingdom potential to be the epicenter of a movement of pipelines to call out the called for the Gospel of Christ.”

Westbrook and his wife Jennifer have been married since 2002, and have three children, two of whom were born in Ohio.

Damian Cirincione began serving as the executive director-treasurer elect for the Nevada Baptist Convention on September 7.

Cirincione had been serving as executive pastor of Shadow Hills Church in Las Vegas, as well as the current president of the Nevada convention.

During the search for a new executive director, the executive board said in a statement that Cirincione had “removed himself from any responsibilities as president of the convention,” as it pertained to the search process for a new state executive director, in order to avoid a conflict of interest.

In the letter announcing Cirincione’s hiring, the board said every step in the process of naming a new director—from approving a job description, to processing applications, to conducting final interviews—was “saturated in prayer.”

Upon acceptance of the position of executive director-elect, Cirincione stepped down from his role as convention president, and will begin his role as active executive director-treasurer at the Nevada Baptist Convention Annual Meeting October 18-19.

Cirincione and his wife, Judith, have two children together.