LISTEN: A SECRET RECORDING REVEALS HOW CHURCH ELDERS BROKE THE TRAGIC NEWS OF PASTOR ROBERT MORRIS’ RESIGNATION TO STAFF MEMBERS AT THE GATEWAY CHURCH HE FOUNDED AND PASTORED FOR 35 YEARS. DANIEL WHYTE III SHARES 10 THINGS THE ELDER BOARD, THE EXECUTIVE STAFF, AND THE MEMBERS OUGHT TO DO POST HASTE
DANIEL WHYTE III, PRESIDENT OF GOSPEL LIGHT SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL, SAYS:
1. THE ENTIRE ELDER BOARD SHOULD RESIGN EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY;
2. THE ENTIRE EXECUTIVE STAFF SHOULD RESIGN EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY;
3. GATEWAY CHURCH SHOULD IMMEDIATELY DO AWAY WITH THE THOUGHT OF ROBERT MORRIS’ SON, JAMES MORRIS, OR ANYBODY IN ROBERT MORRIS’ FAMILY TAKING OVER THE CHURCH AS PASTOR;
4. ROBERT MORRIS AND HIS WIFE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO ATTEND THE CHURCH EVER AGAIN ON ANY CAMPUS;
5. THE CHURCH SHOULD WELCOME A FULL AND THOROUGH INVESTIGATION OF ROBERT MORRIS, HIS WIFE, THE ALLEGATIONS AT HAND WITH CINDY CLEMISHIRE, THE EMAIL REGARDING 100 COUNTS OF CHILD RAPE, THE PAST 35 YEARS OF SO-CALLED “MINISTRY” AT THE CHURCH THAT WOULD INCLUDE A COMPLETE SHAKING OF THE TREE OF THE CHURCH TO SEE IF THERE ARE ANY MORE CASES OF CHILD MOLESTATION, CHILD RAPE, CHILD GROOMING, AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
6. ANY COUPLE WITH SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN SHOULD NOT ATTEND THE CHURCH BUILDING UNTIL THIS HORRIFYING MATTER IS COMPLETELY DEALT WITH AND MAYBE SHOULD NOT EVER GO BACK. THESE PEOPLE SHOULD CONSIDER HAVING CHURCH AT HOME OR GO TO ANOTHER BIBLE-TEACHING, BIBLE-PREACHING, AND BIBLE-LIVING CHURCH.
7. IF YOU DECIDE TO GO TO GATEWAY, KEEP YOUR CHILDREN WITH YOU. DO NOT LEAVE THEM IN THE NURSERY OR SOME OTHER PART OF THE CAMPUS WHERE YOU CANNOT SEE THEM AND OBSERVE THEM. A DEMONIC SPIRIT OF PEDOPHILIA IS AT THAT CHURCH BUILDING.
8. BE LOYAL AND FAITHFUL TO THE LORD, NOT TO A DREAM OR VISION OR HOPEFULNESS OR AN IDEA OR A CHURCH BUILDING. BE FAITHFUL TO THE LORD. MANY SHOULD CONSIDER LEAVING THIS CHURCH BUILDING PERMANENTLY BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN A 35-YEAR DECEPTION, FRAUD, CRIME SCENE, AND A DEMON SPIRIT OF PEDOPHILIA IS THERE.
9. UNTIL ALL OF THIS IS INVESTIGATED, CEASE TITHING AND GIVING TO THIS ENTITY — THIS HOUSE OF HORRORS — IF YOU HAVE GIVEN LARGE SUMS OF MONEY IN THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AND EVEN MILLIONS, ASK FOR ALL OF IT BACK AND DONATE IT TO ANOTHER CHRISTIAN MINISTRY OR ORGANIZATION THAT YOU TRUST BECAUSE IN REALITY THIS OPERATION SHOULD BE CLOSED DOWN AT LEAST TEMPORARILY.
10. ALL PUBLIC FIGURES WHO HAVE PREACHED AT GATEWAY CHURCH AND WHO ARE SCHEDULED TO PREACH SHOULD PUBLICLY CONDEMN ROBERT MORRIS FOR RAPING A CHILD FOR 5 YEARS AND LYING ABOUT IT FOR 35 YEARS TO MULTIPLE PEOPLE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES ALL OF TRUMP’S EVANGELICAL EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS, WHICH INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:
- Michele Bachmann – Former Congresswoman
- Mark Burns – Pastor, Harvest Praise and Worship Center
- Tim Clinton – President, American Association of Christian Counselors
- Kenneth and Gloria Copeland – Founders, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
- James Dobson – Author, Psychologist and Host, My Family Talk
- Jerry Falwell, Jr. – President, Liberty University
- Ronnie Floyd – Senior Pastor, Cross Church
- Jentezen Franklin – Senior Pastor, Free Chapel
- Jack Graham – Senior Pastor, Prestonwood Baptist Church
- Robert Jeffress – Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Dallas
- David Jeremiah – Senior Pastor, Shadow Mountain Community Church
- Richard Land – President, Southern Evangelical Seminary
- Greg Laurie — Harvest Christian Fellowship, Riverside, California
- James MacDonald – Founder and Senior Pastor, Harvest Bible Chapel
- Johnnie Moore – Author, President of The KAIROS Company
- Tom Mullins – Senior Pastor, Christ Fellowship
- Ralph Reed – Founder, Faith and Freedom Coalition
- James Robison – Founder, Life OUTREACH International
- Tony Suarez – Executive VicePresident, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
- Jay Strack – President, Student Leadership University
- Paula White – Senior Pastor, New Destiny Christian Center
- Tom Winters – Attorney, Winters and King, Inc.
- Sealy Yates – Attorney, Yates and Yates
Four days after they learned of decades-old child sex abuse allegations against their senior pastor, Robert Morris, hundreds of Gateway Church employees filed into an auditorium in Southlake, Texas, on Tuesday to learn his fate.
Some staff members appeared solemn as they found their seats. Others looked angry. One attendee pulled out her cellphone and secretly hit record. Later, she shared the audio with NBC News and described the meeting in an interview. A second person who attended confirmed her account and the recording’s authenticity.
Kenneth W. Fambro II, a real estate executive who serves on Gateway’s board of elders, struggled through tears as he delivered the news that employees had come to hear: Morris, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders, was resigning from the church he’d founded 24 years earlier.
“This,” Fambro said of accepting Morris’ resignation, “has been one of the most difficult decisions in my life.”
The recording of Fambro’s remarks reveals the deeply conflicted feelings of church leaders as they come to terms with the knowledge that their founding pastor — the man who’d built Gateway into one the largest megachurches in America and served on former President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisory board — had confessed to engaging in “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a child.Fambro opened Tuesday by acknowledging that he and other church officials had long known that Morris had admitted to sexual misconduct when he was young. It was a story Morris told so often over the years from the pulpit and in one-on-one meetings that “you can get kind of numb” to it, Fambro said, according to the recording.
“Pastor Robert did a phenomenal job of being open and transparent about his transgressions and his past, his moral failures,” Fambro said, speaking on behalf of the elders board, which is charged with governing the church.
“What we did not know was that she was 12 years old.”
Cindy Clemishire, the woman who accused Morris of molesting her as a child, disputed the notion that Morris had been transparent. In a statement to NBC News, she said she was disturbed that Gateway elders struggled over whether to remove him from leadership.“What is so difficult about accepting the resignation from a man who repeatedly sexually abused a little girl for almost five years and then lied about it?” Clemishire said after having reviewed a transcript of the recording provided by NBC News. “Why wasn’t he terminated?”
Clemishire and her lawyer, Boz Tchividjian, contend that she contacted Morris and church officials with her allegations in 2005 and 2007 and that Gateway’s board of elders should have long ago investigated Morris’ version of events. (Fambro began attending the church in 2006 and became an elder in 2014, according to Gateway’s website.)
Morris hasn’t been charged with a crime and didn’t respond to messages requesting comment.
The allegations were made public Friday in a post published by The Wartburg Watch, a website focused on exposing abuse in churches. Clemishire, 54, described in the post and in a subsequent interview with NBC News how Morris had molested her for years beginning on Christmas night in 1982, when she was 12.Initially, Morris and Gateway’s elders responded Friday and Saturday by acknowledging in statements that Morris had several sexual encounters with a “young lady” when he was in his 20s and saying he had been transparent about his sin and had repented.
“Since the resolution of this 35-year-old matter, there have been no other moral failures,” the elders said in a message to employees Friday.
But some Gateway parishioners and staff members viewed the statement itself as a moral failure. Why had church leaders described the alleged sex abuse of a 12-year-old with euphemisms?
Fambro didn’t address that question in his remarks Tuesday, and he and other church elders didn’t respond to messages requesting comment. A spokesperson for Gateway also didn’t respond.
The person who made the recording of Tuesday’s staff meeting said she shared it with a reporter because she believes the board of elders is “gaslighting” employees about its initial defense of Morris and needs to be replaced. NBC News isn’t naming the woman because she fears retaliation.
At the meeting, Fambro defended the board of elders, which he said had been fielding criticism from members who felt leaders had taken too long to respond to the crisis.He said leaders had deliberated during multiple hourslong meetings Monday and Tuesday and were following the guidance they’d long gotten from their now-former senior pastor.
“If you’ve been here long enough, you’ve heard Pastor Robert say, ‘Before we can move, we need to hear God,’” Fambro said.
Fambro also told employees he and the other elders “have great compassion” for Clemishire and don’t condone what happened to her.
“You won’t hear us try to explain it away,” Fambro said.
But, he added, that doesn’t mean “we don’t love Pastor Robert, that we’re not defending him.”
He then spoke extensively about the profound impact Morris had on his life and on the lives of tens of thousands of church members. Fambro encouraged the audience not to let the revelations of child sex abuse make them lose sight of the good that God had done — and would continue to do — through Gateway and Morris.
“So yes, there is an anointing on this house. Yes, there is an anointing on Pastor Robert,” Fambro said. “But both/and, yes? There was some stuff that was done. They both can exist.”
Fambro asked the staff to pray for Morris’ family, including his son James Morris, who is associate senior pastor and had been scheduled to succeed his father upon his planned retirement next year. Robert Morris is still pulling for Gateway, Fambro said, which was why he is stepping down.
“Pastor Robert wants to see Gateway Church succeed in the body of Christ,” Fambro said. “Pastor Robert wanted to resign to not be a distraction.”