Gateway Church to layoff staff after 35% drop in tithes amid Robert Morris controversy

By CP Staff, Saturday, November 16, 2024

Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas | Screenshot: CBS News Texas

One of three remaining elders at the multi-campus Gateway Church in Texas announced plans to reduce staff amid a 35% drop in giving five months after the resignation of founder and former Pastor Robert Morris. 

Elder Kenneth Fambro shared a financial update in a video message to staff this week. It was posted online by the church watchdog blog Watchkeep and confirmed as authentic by the church to local outlet WFAA. 

"We have, in fact, seen our tithes reduce between 35 and 40%. As a result, we really need to go and start looking at the ministry itself and looking into some staff reductions," Fambro stated. "As leadership, we want to be as clear and transparent as possible as we walk everyone through this process."

"If your department is dissolved or reduced, you will receive the same severance package as those who took the voluntary severance," he said. "That is one month for every year of service up to four months." 

Fambro said Gateway wants to "take care of our staff through this process," noting that staff reductions at the church have "not been handled well in the past." 

"For that, I apologize. We really are trying to look at leadership differently and express leadership differently in doing so," he stated. "My heart goes out to everyone who is processing this right now. But know that we want what God wants. We want you to be exactly where God wants." 

Morris, who founded the church in 2000, resigned in June after he was publicly accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl for years, beginning when she was 12 years old in the 1980s. 

In a service earlier this month, elder Tra Willbanks gave an overview of an investigation led by the law firm Haynes & Boone and announced that multiple elders had been removed. The investigation found that all but three elders had some knowledge about Morris' abuse of Cindy Clemishire and "failed to inquire further."

Additionally, Willbanks said some elders allegedly knew before allegations became public that Clemishire was a child when the abuse occurred. 

"We now know that there were elders and employees at Gateway who knew before June 14, 2024, that Cindy was 12 at the time of the abuse," Willbanks said. "Both groups are fundamentally wrong and simply cannot and will not be tolerated at Gateway Church."

Over the years, Morris had shared versions of a story that he was "unfaithful in his marriage while he was in his early 20s," Willbanks said. 

"According to this version, Robert confessed his sin to apostolic leaders in the late 1980s, many years before Gateway Church was formed. He stepped down from ministry for two years and then was restored back into ministry with the blessing of those same apostolic leaders," Willbanks said. "We as a church knew what our former senior pastor had shared publicly. Many people, including myself, simply believed his version of the story."

Willbanks announced that Gateway is working on "very significant changes" to the church bylaws, including no longer having staff members serve as elders.

Gateway is also facing a class-action lawsuit related to questions surrounding the church's Global Ministries fund, to which church leaders promised to allocate 15% of tithes and offerings to the church. Plaintiffs believe that Gateway "leaders engaged in misrepresentation, fraud, and breach to contract in their efforts to induce Plaintiffs and other church members to donate money to Gateway."