Granbury youth pastor arrested and accused of sexually abusing a child

A youth pastor from Granbury is accused of sexually abusing a child.

Luke Cunningham, who served as a student pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church, was arrested near Lubbock on Wednesday. The 41-year-old pastor is accused of two counts of sexual abuse of a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault.

In a statement to its members, Lakeside said it received information from outside the church on June 2 that Cunningham was accused of inappropriate behavior toward a minor at another church. Lakeside said it immediately launched an investigation and suspended Cunningham. Within days, the statement said, the church determined the evidence justified firing the pastor and reported its findings to authorities.

Lakeside said he was not aware of any assaults in his church, but urged members to report any cases of sexual abuse and said professional counselors were available.

Prior to Granbury, Cunningham served as student pastor at Turning Point Church in Lubbock from 2016 to 2020.

Turning Point said in a written statement that it had not received any complaints during Cunningham’s employment and was not aware of any allegations of past misconduct. The church said it had no further information about the alleged abuse.

“We are shocked by these allegations and feel tremendous sadness for all potential victims,” ​​the Lubbock church said. “We hope to provide all the help we can to victims of sexual abuse so they can find the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual peace they need to heal and move on.”

It is not clear whether Cunningham, who is in jail in Lubbock County, has hired an attorney.

This case occurred days after the resignation of Robert Morris, a well-known Southlake pastor, after allegations of sexual abuse surfaced in the 1980s. Morris, the 62-year-old pastor of Gateway Church, is accused of sexually abusing an Oklahoma woman, now 50, between the ages of 12 and 16.

Lakeside in Granbury said in its statement that it would re-evaluate its procedures for identifying sex offenders and take stricter measures. The organization called on the Southern Baptist Convention, of which it is a member, to take a more aggressive approach to sexual abuse, including by establishing a sex offender database.

“We believe that if the Southern Baptist Convention had a functioning database of perpetrators, we probably would never have come into contact with Mr. Cunningham,” the church said. “We plan to do everything possible to encourage national leaders to fulfill their spiritual responsibility to identify perpetrators in the churches and prevent this from happening again.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, has come under criticism for its handling of allegations of sexual abuse.

An independent firm released a report in 2022 that found that the Southern Baptist Convention blocked and ignored victims of clergy sexual abuse for nearly 20 years. A few months later, the Justice Department launched a federal investigation into sexual abuse within the denomination.