Update: someone reached out to me to share the internal staff memo that Gateway Church elders sent to church staff today about this story. Church elders and Robert Morris confirmed the survivor Cindy’s story. He admits to sexually abusing her & doesn’t deny that he offered her money in exchange for her silence. She was 12 years old when the abuse began and continued for 4.5 years. That’s a child not a “young lady.” This isn’t just a “sin.” This is a crime.
The internal staff memo from Gateway Church executive pastor Thomas Miller was sent at 4 pm. Note the edit to not share this proactively. To my knowledge, church members have not been notified by the church yet.
A survivor has come forward to tell her story of child sexual abuse by megachurch pastor Robert Morris to blogger and abuse survivor advocate Dee Parsons at The Wartburg Watch. This survivor has given permission to use her name.
Robert Morris is founder and senior pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas. According to the church website: Gateway Church is a Bible-based, evangelistic, Spirit-empowered church founded in 2000 by Pastor Robert Morris. Today we meet as one church in many locations with more than 100,000 people attending each weekend. Wikipedia lists Gateway Church as the largest church in the United States. Gateway has 9 locations throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and locations in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and St. Louis, Missouri.
Gateway Church
According to the Gateway Church history, on April 9, 2000 Pastor Jimmy Evans and the elders of Trinity Fellowship Church in Amarillo, Texas, prayed for and released Pastor Robert to start the new church.
Gateway Church website description of pastor Robert Morris:
Robert Morris is the senior pastor of Gateway Church, a multicampus church based in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas. Since it began in 2000, the church has grown to more than 100,000 active attendees.
His television program airs in over 190 countries, and his radio program, Worship & the Word with Pastor Robert, airs in more than 6,800 cities. (For more information, visit PastorRobert.com or follow @PsRobertTV on Facebook, Instagram, and X.)
He serves as chancellor of The King’s University and is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The Blessed Life, Dream to Destiny, The God I Never Knew, and Grace, Period.
Robert and his wife, Debbie, have been married 44 years and are blessed with one married daughter, two married sons, and nine grandchildren.
Robert Morris and his wife Debbie live in a home in the Dallas area with an estimated value of 3.27 million.
When this survivor, Cindy, was an 11 year-old child in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1981, her family met pastor Robert Morris at a youth revival. He was invited to her hometown of Hominy, Oklahoma, to do a youth revival that fall. After that, he started coming regularly to preach at the church on Sundays and would stay at her home.
On December 25, 1982, Robert allegedly began sexually molesting Cindy when she was 12 years old. Robert would have been 20 years old. He told her that night that she could never tell anyone what he did, because it would ruin everything. He continued to create opportunities for the next 4.5 years to sexually molest her, countless times in Oklahoma and Texas, because her family became close friends with his family.
Robert Morris says that he became a Christian at 19 years old.
In March 1987, Cindy told a close friend of her parents what Robert had been doing to her since Christmas night of 1982. Cindy had just turned 17 about 2 months prior to telling her. That night in March of 1987, this friend went with her to tell her parents. Her dad immediately called Robert’s head pastor. He was told to take Robert out of ministry. The very next day, Debbie Morris, Robert’s wife, called Cindy and told her she forgave her, as if she had done something wrong. Cindy was a child during the time of the abuse. Robert then stepped out of ministry for a time.
In the spring of 1989, Robert and Debbie Morris came to Cindy’s parents’ home and asked for permission to get back into the ministry. She says her dad basically washed his hands of him and left it to God. She was 19 at that time.
In Robert’s first book, The Blessed Life, he wrote that he got out of the ministry so God could deal with his pride.
Cindy went to counseling for a decade consistently. It took her years to fully understand the scope of what happened to her as a little girl and young teen. In approximately 2005, she pursued financial restitution for at least the cost of counseling. Robert’s attorney responded with accusations of her (a child) being flirtatious and blaming her. They had offered her some money if she would sign a NDA. She declined.
I am thankful that this survivor has come forward to tell her story. Dee has more details and information in her post on her website, including information about the network of churches connected to Robert Morris.
I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, so this story hits close to home for me. I was able to get some photos of Gateway Church and The King’s University.
When we were driving around the Gateway Church main campus this week, we noticed a brand new building on the edge of the campus. This is the XO Marriage building. XO was founded in 1993 by pastor Jimmy Evans who received “three dreams, at 3 AM from the Lord, with a vision for a marriage ministry.” Jimmy Evans is the same pastor who was involved in the beginning of Gateway Church. On April 9, 2000, Pastor Jimmy Evans and the elders of Trinity Fellowship Church in Amarillo, Texas, prayed for and released Pastor Robert to start the new church.
The XO marriage center opened in June 2023. XO Marriage has a coffee shop.
Robert Morris was a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board: He refers to bloggers who criticize him as people on “Satan’s hit list,” and once claimed that his prayers can help infertile women bear children. In June 2020, Robert Morris hosted a roundtable discussion with then President Trump at Gateway Church Dallas campus.
Dee was able to find a sermon from 2014 in which Robert Morris discusses problems with immoral behavior in his past. He also strangely blames women for any future infidelity by their husbands due to those women engaging in premarital sex with their future husbands.