Gateway announces Virginia megachurch founder as new senior pastor

Gateway Church plans to announce during service today that the church has a new senior pastor: Virginia megachurch founder Daniel Floyd.

Floyd and his wife, Tammie Floyd, will be leaving their roles as senior pastors of Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, Va., a megachurch they founded about 20 years ago that now has five Virginia locations. The Floyds plan to start their new chapter at Gateway around August.

In 2016, Daniel Floyd founded Fredericksburg-based Lifepoint College, a school offering two-year degrees and certificates in subjects including ministry, leadership and biblical studies.

Gateway Church in Southlake has been without a senior pastor since last June, when its longtime senior pastor and founder Robert Morris resigned after being accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1980s. Morris was indicted in March on five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child in Oklahoma and made an initial court appearance in Osage County court May 9. Morris’ preliminary hearing is scheduled for Sept. 4.

Floyd came to Gateway in March to preach a sermon on prayer during the church’s first service since the Oklahoma Attorney General announced the news of Morris’ indictment.

In a Friday interview, Floyd told The Dallas Morning News that before a Gateway elder reached out to him early this year, he had no plans to leave the church he founded. “Honestly, in 20 years, I’ve never looked — I’ve just been really content in the calling that we have right now,” he said.

Tra Willbanks, the chair of Gateway’s board of elders, reached out to Floyd in January through a mutual friend to discuss the possibility of Floyd coming to lead the church. “My first thought was: ‘How would this impact [my] family, and is God in this?’” Floyd said. “And then I think after that, you begin to ask those questions of ‘Do I have what it takes?’”

Floyd said his decision to move to Texas was informed by his daily prayer time and his understanding of what God was calling him to do.

He wakes up around 5:30 every morning, and starts his day with coffee, Bible reading and then prayer for around an hour. “I want God to speak to me before I talk to anybody else, or even before I talk to him,” Floyd said.

Over the past few months, Floyd said, he’s felt God encouraging him to come to Gateway through signs in his daily prayer and Bible reading and through conversations with friends and mentors. “At some point, my wife and I, we were just like — ‘You can’t make this up anymore, how much God is directing and guiding this,’” Floyd said.

Willbanks, who was also part of the Friday interview with The News, said Floyd was giving up a “thriving church” to come and “do a lot of repair work in a community.”

“We needed somebody that understood that for what it was,” he said.

Floyd said he was up for the challenge.

“I don’t want to coast in my life,” he said. He finds the “big task” of leading Gateway both daunting and exciting. “It’s all those emotions in one.”

Willbanks told The News in January that Gateway set up a committee of about 20 to 30 people, including both staff and members, men and women, to help vet the new senior pastor. The church also added four new elders in January to help vote on a senior pastor, choosing people who were not “in the bubble” of how things were run at the church before June, according to Willbanks.

In discussing what the church wanted in a future senior pastor, Willbanks said humility was a top priority. He said he and Floyd spent time talking about the humility and vulnerability needed to stay grounded while leading a large church.

“[Floyd] called me at one point in this process, and he had told me that he had gone back to some of his closest friends and just asked them … ‘Do I show up like a celebrity?’” Willbanks said.

That capacity for self-reflection was a good sign to Willbanks.

“A narcissist doesn’t do that,” he said.

Adrian Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.