It has been one year since megachurch pastor Robert Morris admitted he had sexually abused a child decades earlier and resigned from Gateway Church in Dallas, but the scandal has only grown and now engulfs other leaders in controversies about who knew what when.
Here is just some of what has happened over the past three months:
- In March, Morris was indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child and faces a trial later this year.
- In May, the church rejected Morris’ claims to millions of dollars in retirement benefits, including $800,000 in annual payments Morris says elders previously promised him.
- In June, Cindy Clemishire, who was the victim of Morris’ abuse from 1982 to 1987, starting when she was 12 years old, sued Morris, his wife, Gateway and more than a dozen current and former church elders and media directors for ignoring and covering up the scandal.
The saga has been reported in dozens of articles by The Roys Report and in other outlets since it was first revealed by The Wartburg Watch in June 2024.
Robert Morris
Gateway has removed four elders who failed to take action on the abuse. It also was revealed that the church settled lawsuits with two additional women over sexual abuse by church leaders. One was abused when she was a child. The settlements required that victims sign nondisclosure agreements.
And Gateway warns that offerings have declined 35% to 40% as former members flee the troubled megachurch, which once attracted as many as 100,000 people to its weekend services on multiple campuses and employed more than 500 people. A second round of layoffs was announced this week.
Clemishire’s lawsuit claims Gateway leaders and elders knew about Morris’ abuse but covered it up to protect their pastor and their church. Among those former Gateway leaders she blames are popular pastor/teacher/author Jimmy Evans and Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
Evans was Gateway’s apostolic senior pastor and now runs a ministry called XO Marriage. Boyd was an elder and Morris’ right-hand-assistant and mentee from the time Gateway was founded in 2000 to 2007.
Cindy Clemishire
Gateway’s official position has been that Morris sinned when he was in his 20s, repented of the sin, underwent a two-year period of restoration, was approved to return to ministry, and has remained morally clean ever since.
But Gateway leaders now say Morris never told them the “woman” with whom he conducted a sexual relationship was a child.
In 2007, Boyd was hired to be senior pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Previous pastor Ted Haggard resigned amid scandals including sex with a male prostitute and drug use. Haggard had served as president of the National Association of Evangelicals from 2003 to 2006.
Today, New Life is a multicampus charismatic church with 15,000 members. In a June 8 sermon, Boyd said he was “shocked” at revelations about Morris’ abuse of a child and said claims that he or others at New Life knew the details were “inaccurate,” according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
A former New Life member named Karen Black says Boyd is lying. Black happens to be the sister of Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ 12-year-old victim, and she has evidence to support her claims.
In 2007, Black met with New Life’s pastoral search committee as they were considering hiring Boyd. She told them Boyd was the wrong person to help the church heal from Haggard’s moral collapse and emailed each committee member evidence backing up her concerns.
Black also sent her evidence to Boyd, and tried to meet with him personally, but he claims he never saw her emails.
Brady Boyd
Boyd also claims he never read an email from Gateway leaders strategizing about how to respond to Black’s disclosures to New Life.
New Life ignored Black when it hired Boyd, who promptly named Morris a New Life overseer. Over the years since, Boyd and Morris have regularly preached in paid gigs at each other’s churches.
Now, Boyd is doubling down.
“This is an attack of the enemy,” he said in a recent New Life sermon. “I will always tell you the truth even if it hurts me. I will never ever mislead you or misguide you.” Congregants applauded.
But some aren’t buying it, including a Southern Baptist pastor who has been down this road before.
Kelly Williams, pastor of Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs for 28 years, confronted New Life about Haggard’s sexual sins years before they become public but never received a response. Now, Williams is questioning what Boyd knew when.
“His response is hard to believe,” Williams told The Gazette. “The documents seem to indicate he knew. It’s sad that this happened, but it’s also said that it’s being handled this way again. It appears that no matter the volume of evidence, there is no one at fault.”
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