Alumnus Scott Maze shaped by Southwestern

Scott Maze had never even visited Texas prior to being called by God to study at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but he firmly states that “I’m a Texan now.”

“Fort Worth just feels like home,” said Maze, senior pastor of Cross Church NRH (North Richland Hills) and Cross Church NFW (North Fort Worth). Home originally was Alabama, where he came to faith at First Baptist Church Scottsboro at the age of 7. His dad later took a job in western Kentucky and moved the family to a “very remote place; not even a stoplight in the entire county,” Maze said, adding that he loved it there.

“[I] had a basketball hoop in the driveway. That’s what made me happy.”

Maze said his call to ministry came when he was around 14 years old, “but I didn’t even know what that looked like.” He learned that larger churches had a gym, “so I thought, ‘Okay, I can lead the gym ministry and play basketball for a living,” he added with a smile.

Eventually he began to think that he could make more money in something other than preaching. He graduated high school and began studies in pre-pharmacy at the University of Kentucky but felt something was missing.

“I was depressed,” he said. “I was away from the Lord. Making okay grades, but just was away from God.” One day, realizing money is “not a good enough purpose to really get you out of bed,” he said God’s voice hit him like a thunderbolt.

“He said, ‘You know what you’re supposed to do,’” Maze recalled. “And His voice was not audible; it was louder than being audible. It was just very convicting.”

Maze sat down and wrote his parents a letter, telling them he needed to change his major. “And immediately, right then, I was called to Southwestern Seminary,” he said.

Maze ultimately completed his undergraduate education at the University of Southern Indiana (USI), earning a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal communications in 1994. He drove down to Southwestern in January 1995 and said he knew it was where God called him to be.

Maze earned his Master of Divinity (MDiv) at Southwestern Seminary in 1998 and waited for job offers.

“And then no church contacted me,” he said, adding that he didn’t know how to market himself. “I did a poor thing in my master’s: I didn’t get to know my professors, and I didn’t stick around or talk to them [after class].”

He told his wife, Traci, that, since no churches had contacted him, he might as well pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the seminary. “And she was fine with it. Of course, looking back, you’re so poor, you don’t know how poor you are,” he added with a laugh.

He and Traci had met when his parents moved to Evansville, Ind., and began attending First Southern Baptist Church. Maze also would attend services when he visited from Kentucky and noticed a girl in the choir who was “unbelievably beautiful,” he recalled.

Maze thought he had no chance with her, however. Even after transferring to USI, where both he and Traci were involved in the Baptist Student Union (BSU, now Baptist Student Ministry), he hesitated to ask her out.

It took the BSU director telling him that Traci would go out with him if he asked before Maze asked her out. The couple began dating in 1992 and eloped in Fort Worth on June 18, 1995. They now have three children.

He began working toward his PhD in evangelism in 1999 and likens the experience to “drinking from a fire hydrant.”

“You thought you knew something because you had a master’s degree. But [then] you walk in and you realize, ‘Oh my gosh, I know nothing,’” he explained. “So, the doctoral program was really, really good because there’s fewer numbers and it really forces you to get to know professors.”

Two professors whom he got to know well during his doctoral studies were Roy J. Fish and Malcolm McDow, both former professors of evangelism. McDow and his wife, Melba, are now members of his church, “So I have the blessing and the curse of preaching in front of him every Sunday,” he said with a smile.

Maze also was among McDow’s former students who wrote When the Fires of Heaven Fell, Volume 2 in his honor. “I had the privilege of writing on the first Great Awakening, which is the same awakening that I wrote out in terms of my dissertation,” Maze said.

After waiting so long for an offer to pastor a church, Maze turned down the first church that contacted him.

“And a week later I remember thinking, ‘You know, Scott, God’s called you to pastor and preach. Only one church reached out to you, and you’ve turned them down. Maybe you should reflect on that,’” he said.

Maze did serve as pastor for that church, Lakeview Baptist in Grand Prairie, from 1999 until 2003, and calls it a blessing for him and his family.

Maze earned his PhD from Southwestern in 2006 and went on to pastor churches in Texas and Arkansas before taking the helm of Cross Church in 2012. Originally known as North Richland Hills Baptist Church, Maze said Cross Church “is just a really healthy, stable, strong church [that has] always sought to win people to faith in Christ.”

The church opened its second location along U.S. 287 in 2014. “It’s allowed us to have an evangelical footprint and reach into North Fort Worth, and the Lord seems to be blessing it,” he said.

The services at the North Fort Worth location are led by a campus pastor, Maze said, adding they used video early on but decided “there should be a real preacher up there.” The same passage is preached during services at both locations, he said.

The church also has strong connections with Southwestern Seminary.

“I would say 75% of our staff are Southwestern graduates, and then a number of our people have come from Southwestern, and so we’ve benefited greatly from Southwestern,” Maze said. He also occasionally teaches as an adjunct at the seminary and even took some classes while working toward a degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago.

Maze described the degree as “a 40-something-hour master’s degree that I just kind of took three or four classes, and my campus pastor, he did the same, and we just did that to really understand the business of a nonprofit better.”

His coursework included electives, he said, “and I just chose to come back to Southwestern and took an apologetics course with Andrew Jennings [assistant professor of philosophy of religion and apologetics]. Gosh, that guy is sharp.” He then took the “Theology of John” class under Jim Wicker, professor of New Testament, which Maze said was helpful when he preached an 18-month series on the Gospel of John.

Maze said Southwestern has shaped him tremendously.

“I’m a better Christian because of Southwestern,” he said. “I’ve been able to see Christianity modeled by good and godly people, and that’s been a wonderful thing.”