Earlier this year, shockwaves were sent through the Christian community when a scandal surfaced surrounding Pastor Robert Morris, founder of the Texas-based megachurch Gateway Church. However, the controversy continues to have devastating impacts on the Gateway congregation, its staff, and the broader perception of the Christian church, demonstrating why the Bible teaches to hold our spiritual leaders to extremely high standards.
A former employee of the Southlake, Texas church anonymously spoke to the Christian Post about the impacts the scandal has had on her and her family. When asked if she would ever worship at a megachurch again, she decisively said, “No.”
The former employee illustrated that the experience at Gateway has had such a profound impact on her family that no one attends an organized church at this point. “In fact, I’ll be honest with you, there’s no one in my family … that attends church anymore of any kind. It has destroyed our family,” she said.
Morris had adamantly maintained earlier this year that he had repented from his past sins, which involved an inappropriate sexual relationship with a young girl in the 1980s. However, the anonymous employee wasn’t buying it. “No, never, absolutely not, because he was still lying and giving his narrative of the story all the way to the bitter end. It was horrible,” she said.
“You just look back and go, you know, like I’ve watched so many sermons from the past now — clips and things that people post on social media — and you go, ‘Oh, my God, I heard that sermon. Why did I not get up and walk out [of the church]. He was telling us who he was. … And you’re like, ‘How was I so blind? How did I not see it? How did I not hear it? How did I justify this?’” she said, illustrating how Morris’ legacy is forever damaged.
The anonymous source added that things at Gateway were abusive before the scandal. “Even before this came out, all of the different things that went on at Gateway, the different kinds of spiritual abuse and everything that everyone endured. Once you get any distance from it, you step out from it a little bit, your eyes begin to be opened and you’re like, ‘Oh my God; oh my God,’” she continued.
“It’s a business,” she said, criticizing the megachurch structure. “We had to grapple with it for years. We were like, this is changing. It’s not a ministry; it’s a corporation, it’s a business. We have a job. We don’t have a ministry; we have a job and a career. And it was disgusting.”
Despite trying to attend smaller churches wasn’t an effective solution either. “I went to a small church before I came to Gateway, and that small church, I was spiritually abused there, and found out later on that that pastor had molested someone. And you know he was living a double life,” she said.
The former staffer at Gateway is now resorting to small, family-oriented worship. “I know so many people who have traumas and things from being a part of that small church. So I don’t know, I don’t know what the answer is. We’ve tried different things at home, trying to just have family time where we worship together and things like that.”
The scandal involving Robert Morris, and other like it that have impacted other ministries around the country this year, inflict enormous damage. As described in 1 Timothy 3:1-10, those who hold leadership roles must be held to high standards and set examples for their congregation.
Featured image credit: Featured image credit: Jared Stump, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gateway_Church_NRH.jpg