It was the spring of 2009, just days before the official commissioning of Sagemont Church’s massive one hundred and seventy foot tall Cross. Two men, wearing harnesses, climbed high inside the structure until they reached the junction where the arms of The Cross meet the shaft. There, they prayed and wrote scriptures on the inside walls. Steve Maricelli, long-time Sagemont church member, as well as the Project Manager for the construction of the Cross, recalled that special moment he spent with his son-in-law, Jason Ryan, Sagemont’s Music/Communications Director. Steve said, “I wrote Isaiah 53:6 (NIV) inside the cross arm. ‘All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned each our own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ It’s a verse that means so much to me and it reminds me of the sacrifice the Lord made for me and for everyone. It was also the verse I kept thinking about the whole time I was working on the Cross project. So when it came time to commission it, I thought, ‘I’ve got to write it in there.’”
Over his thirty-nine years working in construction, Steve has been a part of hundreds of building projects. He even co-founded an engineering and construction company in 1978 which merged with a larger firm in 2009. Today, Steve continues
to work for this company, but is looking forward to slowing down in the years to come. Steve states that he is a builder by trade and this expertise qualified him for the job of project manager for the construction of The Cross, as well as a major participant serving as a site manager for Sagemont’s Children’s Building, which was completed in 2001. Of all the jobs he has participated in over the years, Steve admits that working on the Cross was above and beyond his greatest achievement.
While serving on Sagemont’s Visionary Team, Steve recalled the night Senior Pastor, Dr. John Morgan, announced that he had something that God had laid on his heart and wanted to know what they thought. That night Steve listened as Bro. John verbalized his idea for a big, tall cross at the edge of the church’s property. After months of brainstorming and cost studies, it was unanimously approved by the committee. Steve was asked to head up the unique project. From its design, to the building of the amphitheater, fountains and pond, all the way to the elevated structure, Steve was there. He explains, “I have built a lot of things, but I have never built anything that gave me the satisfaction and joy that I have with The Cross. I have been on a number of mission trips, but the one thing The Cross does is allows me to be a part of missions right on the Beltway in Houston 24/7!”
Steve was born November 11, 1950 on Veteran’s Day in Ruston, Louisiana, as the second of ten children. Growing up in Houston, he was raised in the Catholic faith, but when he graduated from high school, he immediately stopped going to any church. He attended a technical school in Dallas, specializing in electronics. From 1970 to 1973, he served in the Army, where most of his time was spent in Germany, again working with electronics. After completing his stint in the military, he found himself a single man on a blind date with a woman named Linda. They married in 1974, and had their first child, daughter, Emily, two years later, followed by daughter, Meghan and then a son, Jesse.
His first interaction with Sagemont came while he and his wife, Linda, were living in Pasadena, in 1984, when the church’s bus ministry had a route that came through their neighborhood and down their street. Steve recalled, “Fred Saltsman and Clennis Tyer came down our street faithfully every Saturday. They knocked on our door and told the kids, ‘Hey, we are going to come by with the bus and pick you up tomorrow morning if you want to go to church!’ So Emily started going with a friend and then later Meghan began going as well. Every Saturday, religiously, Fred and Clennis would stop by the house and invite us to go, too, since the kids were going.” Though they allowed their girls to attend, neither Steve nor his wife was interested in going to any church.
One morning, Fred and Clennis came by and announced that their bus route needed to be canceled. Instead, it was going to be servicing areas closer to the church. Steve remembered their next words, “We are not going to be able to come by and take your kids anymore, but it would be a shame for them to not be able to go to church. Would y’all consider taking them?” Steve and Linda worked out an alternating schedule with the neighbors down the street, whose children had also been a part of the bus ministry. They took turns dropping off and picking up the children at Sagemont every Sunday morning. Steve remembered the day that all changed, “For some reason, one Sunday morning, when
it was my turn to take them, I thought: ‘This is crazy! I ought to go in there and see what’s going on. Here I am dropping my kids off at this place, and I don’t even know what they are doing to them!’ So after dropping the girls off, I went in and heard Bro. John preach for the first time. I came back home and told Linda, ‘We need to go hear these people because it sounds like something we need.’“
By the fourth week of attending Sunday morning services, Steve and Linda felt that they needed to be a part of Sagemont’s family. They joined Larry Ball’s Sunday School department and immediately became friends with James and Sharon Bouvier. Steve smiles as he recalled how their new friends began faithfully sharing the message of Christ’s love with them. Even though the Bouviers “worked on them more” it was a home visit by Fred Saltsman one Saturday night in 1984 when both Steve and Linda prayed the prayer of salvation. Steve stated, “The Lord was dealing with us! We thought, ‘We can’t put this off any longer!’ We both surrendered our lives to the Lord there at our kitchen table. It had a dramatic effect on us because it changed the way we dealt with each other and it changed our attitude towards each other, too. We used to bicker a lot and weren’t content. After we were saved, those petty things got put aside and we realized that there was something more important than the things we were doing. We had a lot better relationship after that.”
Two years later, while the Maricelli family was playing a game of Scrabble, Linda died suddenly. Steve said, “We didn’t know it previously, but she had Marfan’s Syndrome. It’s a connective tissue disorder that breaks down the strength of the fiber around arteries like the aorta. It ruptured and she had severe internal bleeding. She wasn’t sick, but she was pregnant with our fourth child.” Steve found himself, a 36 year-old single man having to raise his three children, ages 10, 6 and 4, alone. “I lived that nightmare for a while. I had a real wakeup call! I finally realized how much Linda did for our family. Before she died, I just worked and didn’t really get involved with the kids and not that much with her.”
Sometime later, Sagemont friends, the Bouviers, Patsy Hogg, Susan Gadd and some well-meaning others, encouraged Steve to take an interest in widow, Sammie Johnston, who also attended Sagemont. She had grown up in Houston and married Tom Johnston in 1970. Together, they had two boys: Devin, born in 1974 and Daniel, born in 1976. In 1977, while attending one of Sagemont’s revivals, led by Sam Cathy, she was convicted during a video about the rapture. Sammie recalled, “I had basically been raised in the Baptist church…I just figured everything was okay with me. At the end of the movie, there was a picture of a superimposed cross on a city street and all the people and the traffic were going by and Jesus was hanging on this cross. That’s when it hit me and I realized that was me! I am daily walking past that cross, and here, He died for me, and I am not even acknowledging it! That was the night I made the decision to follow Christ and was saved. I was already participating in church at the time, but it just didn’t click with me until then. I realized how very personal salvation is. It is not a brief weekly activity…it comes down to just you and the Lord.”
In July of 1985, Sammie and her husband, Tom, moved back to the Sagemont area after living in east Texas. Just one month later, Tom was working as a marine surveyor assigned to take pictures of an oil rig accident in the Gulf. His boat was caught out in turbulent weather from effects of a hurricane. While trying to go out of Matagorda Bay, the high waves flipped their boat. The other two men with him managed to get safely back to shore, but Tom did not make it. Sammie recalled that most difficult time, “The boys were just 11 and 8 years old then. It was really an awful experience. They looked for Tom for three days! I remember how Bro. John was so sweet and very caring towards us. I thank God that we were members at Sagemont Church, because all of our friends were here.” The two years after Tom’s death were not easy for Sammie as she worked and took care of her two young sons. When she heard of Linda Maricelli’s passing, she also grieved for Steve and his children’s loss, understanding the difficult times they were to face in the days to come.
Sammie said, “I remember the first time Sharon Bouvier brought up the idea of Steve and I dating and I remember saying to her, ‘You have got to be kidding! He has three kids and I have two and I don’t want anything to do with that!” Though it was awkward for both of them at first, Steve and Sammie began spending time together and eventually fell in love. They were married in January of 1988 in a ceremony officiated by Bro. John at Sagemont Church.
During their honeymoon, they discussed their children at great length. Steve said, “We knew WE were in love, but our kids hardly knew each other! So, how are we going to deal with this? We basically agreed that no matter what, we always have to stand with one common front and be in one accord. We decided that if we have any differences of opinion, then we will go talk about it away from the kids. Of course they pitted each other against us and they jockeyed for position for a while before they realized it wasn’t going to work. Then, after a while, it all settled down.” The new blended family lived in Steve’s home in Pasadena until the school year ended and then they sold both homes and moved to a larger home in Pearland. Steve and Sammie’s decision to move to a new area was made so that they would still live near the church, but all the children would have to attend a new school and they would all have a fresh start.
Currently, all the children, now grown and married with children of their own, attend Sagemont Church with the exception of Daniel and his family, who live near Panama City, Florida. Sammie smiles as she stated, “We have five wonderful children who have chosen God and have all grown up to be strong Christians. Steve and I are so incredibly proud of them. If anyone says, ‘You did such a good job,’ my answer to them is, ‘No, God did a good job!’ We made lots of mistakes, just like people do raising kids, but God had His hand on them and us. He took all our mistakes and turned them into good things.” Steve and Sammie are looking forward to celebrating the birth of two more grandchildren this year bringing them a total of 12.
Like those who drive pass The Cross daily, Steve and Sammie’s lives have also experienced deep valleys. Those times have caused them to turn and find hope in the knowledge of the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. Through the loss of both of their spouses and pressures of single parenting, they acknowledge that Jesus never left them during those hard times.
So, the next time you pass by that huge, white Cross, be reminded of the man who was instrumental in its construction and his heart’s desire written inside: “We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.” Isaiah 53:6 (The Message).