Gateway Church founder Robert Morris resigns after allegations of sexual abuse

Robert Morris, founder and pastor of Gateway Church, resigned from the North Texas megachurch on Tuesday. The resignation came days after he was accused of sexually abusing a then 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

Cindy Clemishire, an Oklahoma woman now 54, accused Morris of sexually abusing her in 1982, when she was 12 years old. The allegations were published on June 14 by the religious blog The Wartburg Watch. Clemishire told the blog the abuse continued for 4.5 years. Morris confessed to “inappropriate sexual conduct” toward a “young lady” in the days that followed, but did not give an age. A June 14 internal statement sent by church elders to Gateway staff and later posted on X said Morris had “spoken openly and honestly about a moral failing he committed over 35 years ago.”

Now, in a statement from the Gateway Church’s Council of Elders on June 18, it says that they “did not know all the facts about the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the duration of the abuse.” The council accepted Morris’ resignation from the Gateway Church on the same day.

“The elders previously believed that Morris’ extramarital relationship, which he had frequently mentioned during his tenure, was with ‘a young lady’ and not the abuse of a 12-year-old child,” the statement said. “Although this occurred many years before Gateway was founded, we as church leaders regret that we did not have the information we now have.”

Morris founded the Gateway Church in 2000, based in Southlake. Since then, the network has expanded to several locations in Tarrant County in Fort Worth, Southlake, Grand Prairie and North Richland Hills. The Gateway Church Network also installed Landon and Heather Schott as senior pastors of Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth.

Mercy Culture Church elders said in Tuesday’s statement that Morris had spoken for years of a “moral failure” in the early years of his marriage and had “undergone a process of restoration and recovery.”

“However, the age of the girl involved and the time period of these incidents were never disclosed,” the statement said. “Abuse in any form cannot be tolerated or covered up anywhere, especially not in the church.”

Morris said in his June 14 statement that the “situation came to light in 1987” and he was asked by elders at Shady Grove Church, now the Grand Prairie campus of Gateway Church, to step away from ministry and seek counseling. Two years later, Morris said, he returned to ministry “with the full blessing” of the elders and Clemishire’s father.

Experts and former Gateway employees react to the church’s reckoning

John Potter, a clinical professor at Southern Methodist University and an active practitioner in dispute resolution and conflict management, said churches are not immune to cases of sexual abuse. The best thing an organization can do, Potter said, is to address the problem as quickly as possible.

“They (Gateway Church) went through this process that they thought was the right thing to do, and maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” Potter said.

The Gateway Church Council of Elders said in its statement that the church was engaging a law firm to conduct an independent, thorough and professional review of the report on the past abuse.

Bob Hamp, a licensed marriage and family therapist and co-owner of Think Differently Counseling, said the church would benefit from training from abuse advocates and counselors “whose goal in this situation is to bring healing and recovery to the victim.” Hamp served on the staff of Gateway Church from 2005 to 2014.

“People in the counseling world, people who advocate for abuse, know how to respond to abuse so that the victim and the victim’s families and loved ones experience healing and recovery,” Hamp said. “People in the legal world are just looking for ways to protect the church from liability.”

Shannon Thomas is a licensed social worker and owner and lead therapist at Southlake Christian Counseling. She worked for six months as an administrative assistant in the Family and Marriage Ministry at Gateway Church. She and her former colleagues are “deeply saddened” by the news.

“I also recognized a certain shame. And all of us, the therapists in the community, have to work really hard with these real survivors of betrayal,” Thomas said. “It’s devastating for people.”

Thomas said she believes the Gateway Church has a future, but the June 14 statement in which Morris referred to Clemishire, then 12, as a “young lady” has damaged the congregation, she said.

“Robert and the elders have unfortunately been educating the church for decades about the true nature of this moral failure, and it is time to call it what it is, abuse, and it must be handled with the brevity of that word,” Thomas said.

Morris had previously announced that he would step down from his position as senior pastor of the church. He proposed his son, James Morris, as his successor to the elders in February 2022. As things stand, James Morris is scheduled to begin his service as senior pastor of Gateway Church in spring 2025.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual violence, it is not your fault. You are not alone. Help is available 24/7 through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE or visit the Online-Hotlineand in Spanish in rainn.org/es.

Marissa Greene is a Report for America Corps member and covers faith for the Fort Worth Report. Reach her at [email protected] or @marissaygreene. At The Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy Here.

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