Embattled Gateway Church is adding four new elders and continues its search for a senior pastor after recently coming close to filling the position. Elder Tra Willbanks gave those updates in an unlisted YouTube video dated Jan. 28.
“I thought we were close to finding our senior pastor a few weeks ago,” said Willbanks in the video update about the Dallas-area church. “Ultimately, it didn’t work. And that’s ok. I’m not discouraged by that at all because I want—and I know you do too—this person to be who the Lord has for Gateway.”
Willbanks acknowledged that waiting is difficult, even “agonizing” at times, but said that God is with Gateway. “Gateway Church is in a period of waiting right now,” Willbanks said. “And I know you know this, but [God] is working in and through our church, and he is with us in the waiting.”
Gateway Church Adds 4 Elders to Leadership
Last June, a woman named Cindy Clemishire said that Gateway’s founding Pastor Robert Morris sexually abused her in the 1980s starting when she was 12 years old and Morris was in his 20s. While church leaders initially defended Morris after the allegations surfaced, they subsequently accepted his resignation, saying they had not previously understood the “inappropriate” relationship (as Morris had publicly referred to it) to have been with a minor and abusive.
The elders engaged law firm Haynes and Boone, LLP, to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations against Morris, and Gateway publicly apologized to Clemishire. Clemishire said at the time that the church had in fact known the nature of her “relationship” with Morris, and she expressed concerns about the parameters of the independent investigation.
In the ensuing months, Gateway launched a search for a new senior pastor and navigated the scandal’s fallout, which has included a number of changes in church leadership, legal challenges, and financial difficulties.
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Morris’ son, James, and James’ wife, Bridgette, stepped down from their roles as pastors at the church, and well-known author and pastor Max Lucado and church leader Joakim Lundqvist became interim pastors.
In October, current and former members of Gateway Church filed a class action lawsuit against Robert Morris and three other church leaders, alleging financial fraud. Willbanks said in a response at the time that a third-party audit had been conducted on Gateway’s finances from 2005 to the present and that no “wrongdoing” had been “revealed.” He said the church was applying to join the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) in pursuit of greater financial transparency.
In November, Willbanks reported the results of the independent investigation, which included that no other victims of Morris had been discovered but that there were in fact “elders and employees at Gateway who knew before June 14, 2024, that Cindy was 12 years old at the time the abuse began.”
