Southwestern alumnus Adam Groza marks first year as Gateway Seminary president

Adam Groza didn’t grow up Southern Baptist, so when a friend suggested he check out Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, he said, “I had never heard of Southwestern Seminary. I didn’t know about Southern Baptist seminaries, quite frankly.”

Now he is approaching his first anniversary as president of Gateway Seminary, the Southern Baptist Convention’s only seminary in the western United States.

Groza began as the eighth president of Gateway in May 2024 and described his first year as “joyful, energizing, encouraging.” He expressed gratitude for the journey that brought him there, including the role Southwestern Seminary played in his leadership development.

Groza was born in California but moved to Phoenix as a child when his dad was transferred there. Growing up in a family of faith, he said his parents made sure they went to churches where the Gospel was preached. He decided to follow Christ during a church summer camp when he was 16 years old.

“I had made earlier professions of faith, and so I probably would’ve told you I was rededicating my life, but I think, in hindsight, that was actually when I was born again,” he said.

After high school, Groza went on to study at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

“For me, it was an amazing experience because being at a public university where my faith was constantly, sort of, challenged, and being a Christ follower wasn’t ‘the cool thing,’ it had the effect in my life of making me really want to study the Bible,” Groza recalled.

As his undergraduate studies were coming to an end, Groza found himself wanting to learn more about God’s Word and theology.

“After four years at a public university, I was very excited about the idea of just being around other Christians and talking about the faith as believers, rather than always just, sort of, defending the faith and presenting the faith to others,” he said.

Groza attended The Master’s Seminary in the Los Angeles area and was involved in the campus ministry, leading Bible studies and evangelism events. One day, fellow student Stacy Johnson, a Southern Baptist pastor in Southern California, asked Groza what he wanted to do when he graduated. Groza replied that he wanted to study philosophy at a school that had a strong commitment to God’s Word. He had taken philosophy classes at the public university, but said students there weren’t really able to bring in discussions of faith.

“I wanted that,” he said. “I wanted to study philosophy, but I also wanted to relate it constantly to my faith and root it in my faith.”

Johnson suggested Southwestern Seminary.

When Groza traveled to Fort Worth and met with faculty in Southwestern’s philosophy PhD program, he was “incredibly impressed with how forthright they were about their belief in the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, and yet they also had a real rigorous philosophical program,” he said. He also was impressed with the research that faculty members were conducting.

Groza said Bill Goff, current senior professor of Christian Ethics, and Douglas Blount, former philosophy of religion professor, in particular had a strong impact on him.

“I saw what it looked like to do doctoral research with a very strong commitment to God’s Word and a constant concern for the local church,” he said. “And doing research under the lordship of Christ is something that my faculty really impressed upon me.”

Groza earned his Master of Theology and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Southwestern in 2003 and 2009, respectively.

While at Southwestern, Groza served as youth pastor, then senior pastor, of Fairview Baptist Church in Rhome, Texas. He later worked on campus, serving as associate director of the Riley Center before becoming director of admissions for the seminary and teaching in the college.

One day while working at the Riley Center, Groza was asked to find someone to pick up a chapel speaker—Jeff Iorg, a Southwestern alumnus and then president of Golden Gate Seminary (now Gateway).

“And I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to pick up Jeff Iorg. I would like to meet Jeff Iorg,’” Groza recalled with a smile.

While picking him up at the airport, Groza, having read Iorg’s bio and knowing of his love for barbecue, suggested dinner. The two developed a friendship over that meal and, in 2007, Groza was offered a job at Golden Gate.

“I turned it down,” he said. “And it just goes to show God’s timing, because I needed a few more years to grow and to learn.”

Iorg contacted Groza again at the end of 2009 to tell him about another opening at the seminary. Groza applied and was hired in spring 2010 as vice president of enrollment and [???] student services, a position he would hold for the next 14 years.

Working for Iorg “was just a constant lesson in leadership,” Groza said, adding that his predecessor is “someone who thinks very strategically and really keeps the mission of the institution at the forefront of our thinking. And so I was able to take the best of what I learned at Southwestern, and then this amazing opportunity to serve under Jeff Iorg.”

Iorg announced his retirement from Gateway Seminary in fall 2023 and encouraged him to apply for the president’s position, Groza said.

“I felt led to apply,” he said. “I certainly never assumed or really even dreamed that one day I would have the opportunity to be president. … And it was God’s perfect timing, both in my life and in Jeff’s life” because Iorg would soon be called as president of the SBC Executive Committee.

Iorg recalled that first meeting with Groza, noting he was “impressed with this passion for seminary education and his compelling interest in ministry in the American West.” The decision to invite Groza to apply at Gateway was an easy one, he added.

Iorg said Groza is “a remarkable combination of vision, passion, intelligence, and humility.  It was a natural progression to include him in the group of candidates [for] president at Gateway and it was not surprising when the search committee selected him.”

Iorg said Groza’s first year has been outstanding.

“He is leading the seminary in new initiatives, solving problems, and charting a path for the next 20 years,” Iorg said.

As president of Gateway, Groza oversees the seminary’s five campuses, located near urban cities in the western United States, with its main campus in Ontario, Calif. The first year of Groza’s presidency coincided with Gateway’s 80^th anniversary celebration, which drew more than 2,000 people to an outdoor festival featuring music, carnival rides, and food trucks.

In addition to new and expanded partnerships, Groza’s first year saw the launch of the Jeff P. Iorg School of Christian Leadership, named in honor of the former seminary president. Officials also reached an agreement to relocate the seminary’s San Francisco Bay Area campus to improve student access.

Though the January wildfires in Southern California didn’t directly impact the seminary’s campus in that region, Groza said it did impact the students. Most Gateway students are in their 30s, he explained, and 85 percent of them are in the local church ministry.

“And when there’s economic challenges, fires, these things create ministry demands that make it even harder to go to seminary,” Groza said. “I think that’s really the biggest challenge, is finding creative ways to better serve students with increasing demands in work and life here in Southern California.”

Groza noted that seminaries throughout the country are training ministry leaders in challenging times, but he’s been thankful for the support and encouragement from other Southern Baptist leaders, including Southwestern Seminary President David S. Dockery, during his first year as Gateway’s president.

Fellow Southern Baptist seminary presidents “might compete with, but we don’t compete against each other, and there’s a big difference,” Groza said. “We work together to make each other better.”

He said he has experienced the graciousness and kindness of Southern Baptists at every point.

“I didn’t come to Southwestern as a Southern Baptist, [but] Southwesterners welcomed my wife and I,” he said. “They were patient with us. We didn’t know an IMB from NAMB. We had no knowledge of the convention, and they just very graciously welcomed us.”

He and his family received the same kind of welcome when he became president of Gateway last year, he said, adding, “I’ve felt God’s blessing and grace through the amazing people at Gateway.”

As he reflected on his first year as Gateway president, Groza said he is “deeply grateful for my seminary experience at Southwestern. There’s no way that I’d be the leader that I am without the men and women that poured into me, modeled leadership for me.”