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Gateway Church elder says accepting resignation of pastor in sex abuse scandal was ‘difficult’ decision
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.”
new video loaded: Trump Says He ‘Loves the Inflation’ Amid War With Iran
transcript
transcript
Trump Says He ‘Loves the Inflation’ Amid War With Iran
President Trump dismissed the newest inflation report on Wednesday, marking the third-straight month of high prices for consumers. The war in Iran has snarled the world’s energy supply, resulting in high oil and gas prices.
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Reporter: “Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a —” “No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love. I love the inflation.” “Inflation to come down between now and —” “When the war is over?” “Yes.” “It’s coming down.” “I know you can’t —” “It’s going to come down like a rock.”
By Jorge Mitssunaga
June 10, 2026
Iran has again claimed attacks on United States military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, and targeted two vessels in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for renewed waves of US attacks on the country.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it launched drone strikes on Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa airbase and Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem and Ahmad Al-Jaber airbases early on Thursday.
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The Al-Azraq airbase in Jordan was also targeted with 12 ballistic missiles, it said, while two oil tankers that attempted “to illegally pass through” the Strait of Hormuz were also hit.
Bahrain activated air raid sirens twice, while Kuwait said its air defence systems were “intercepting hostile aerial targets”.
The IRGC said the strikes were in response to the US’s “repeated violations” of an April ceasefire and declared the Strait of Hormuz “closed until further notice”.
All traffic in the waterway, including oil tankers and commercial vessels, would be shot at, it said.
The attacks came after the US’s Central Command announced renewed strikes on “multiple targets” inside Iran. The military said the strikes were at President Donald Trump’s “direction” and “in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression”.
Tit-for-tat exchanges
Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, said about a dozen places were hit in three waves of attacks by the US, including in the city of Karaj, west of the Iranian capital, and in the central Abyek county.
Iranian state media reported multiple explosions on the islands of Qeshm and Kish and in the cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik along the Strait of Hormuz.
Blasts also hit the southern city of Kargan, wounding at least two people.
The US Central Command, which announced an end to the strikes four hours after they began at 22:15 GMT on Wednesday, said it hit “military surveillance capabilities, communication systems, and air defense sites across Iran”.
The latest exchange came a day after the two sides traded tit-for-tat strikes, triggered by the downing of a US Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz. Washington blamed Tehran for the incident and said the two pilots were rescued uninjured.
Iran said it targeted the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, as well as an airbase in Azraq, Jordan, on Wednesday. The US, meanwhile, bombed Qeshm Island as well as the ports of Sirik, Jask and Bandar Abbas.
Tehran said the US attacks destroyed two water reservoirs and damaged a telecommunications tower.
Al Jazeera’s Vall said many of the locations hit on Thursday “were similar to those hit during the previous night”. He said that “the Americans are betting on force as the only means for them to force the Iranians to sign a deal, but the Iranians are saying that the result will be the contrary”.
Trump threatens Iran
At the White House on Wednesday, Trump accused Iran of stalling negotiations for a peace deal and threatened to hit the country “very hard”.
“We’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal. But they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers,” he told reporters.
Earlier in the day, the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform that Iran had taken too long to negotiate a peace deal and “now they will have to pay the price”.
In a subsequent interview with Fox News, he also threatened to strike power plants and bridges in Iran if it was unwilling to sign an agreement.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian hit back in a post on X.
“Critical infrastructures are the lifeblood of the people. Threats to target them – from transportation networks to the electricity and water industries – are not a show of strength but a sign of desperation in the face of a nation’s will,” he wrote.
“Iran, relying on the knowledge and capabilities of its specialists, national unity, and solidarity, will stand firm against any pressure or threat,” he added.
The US-Iran escalation comes days after Israel and Iran traded fire in their most serious clash since the April ceasefire, which ended weeks of devastating US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian retaliatory attacks across the Gulf.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has remained severely limited ever since, driving up oil and food prices worldwide.
Progress towards a peace deal also remains slow.
The two sides are engaged in indirect talks aimed at securing an interim agreement that would halt hostilities, while deferring Iran’s nuclear programme to future negotiations.
But sticking points remain, with Iran demanding the release of frozen assets and relief from sanctions. Complicating matters further is Israel’s intensifying campaign in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Case 5:26-cr-20306-JEL-EAS ECF No. 1, PageID.103 Filed 05/20/26 Page 13 of 63
Michigan. They littered the yard and porch with small tents, sheets wrapped to look like dead bodies, dismembered and bloody baby dolls, and a broken crib. They taped a demand note to the front door ordering, among other things, that the University of Michigan divest from Israel. c. On or about May 15, 2024, shortly after police arrived at V-1’s house, @safeumich, @jvpumich and @tahrirumich posted a video of the trespass with this message:
GOOD MORNING, @[V-1]. This morning, on the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, students hand delivered our demands to Regent [V-1]. About 2 weeks ago, she laughed at students demanding divestment while she attended a party next door to our encampment. Regent [V- 1], we will hold you accountable for the 35,000+ Palestinians martyrs whose death you funded and profited from. No matter how many times you call on violent cops to brutalize students, cancel and move your meetings to hide from students, and refuse to admit this university’s and YOUR complicity in genocide, we will continue to protest. You cannot hide. We demand divestment and will remain relentless in the struggle for a free Palestine.
d. On or about May 15, 2024, later in the day, @safeumich posted:
@[V-1] There’s nothing funny about genocide. This morning, the UMich Gaza Solidarity Encampment delivered our demands to Regent [V-1’s] door, the same regent who laughed in our faces as we told her, “[V-1, V-1] you can’t hide, you are funding genocide.” Since this morning, she has reiterated REFUSAL to divest on X. SHAME! We have communicated that the regents must respond to our demands with an open bargaining meeting for divestment by the end of their board meeting TOMORROW!… [V-1], if you aren’t losing sleep after funding mass murder and genocide, then WE WILL WAKE YOU UP!
e. On or about May 17, 2024, Unsalted Counter Info’s website cross-
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