Robert Morris Demanding Over $1M From Gateway Church

Founding pastor, indicted for child sexual abuse, also seeking $800k per year until he is 70.

FILE – Pastor Robert Morris at Gateway Church Dallas Campus in June 2020. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File via RNS)

Gateway Church is seeking the intervention of a Tarrant County district court to stop an arbitration proceeding sought by its founding pastor, Robert Morris, for over $1 million.

On April 23, 2025, Morris sent a letter to the Institute for Christian Conciliation, a division of Ambassadors of Reconciliation, with a demand for arbitration between himself and Gateway Church seeking enforcement of the terms of a deferred defined benefit plan and the intellectual property rights to his books and other works.

As of January 8, Morris claimed the church owed him $1,083,574 that it was refusing to pay. He also claimed he was terminated by the church even though the church has said he resigned.

Based on the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, Gateway filed an application to stay the arbitration proceeding with the 352^nd District Court in Tarrant County, Texas, the same county where Gateway is located.

According to the church’s application, the revelation of Morris’s alleged sexual abuse of then 12-year-old Cindy Clemishire in the 1980s and his “decades-long campaign of misinformation and mischaracterization” disqualified him from his position as pastor.

Morris has been indicted by a grand jury in Oklahoma for five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. He made his initial appearance in the criminal matter on May 9 with a preliminary hearing set for September 4.

Not long after Morris resigned in June 2024, the church claims he sought a $1 million payment from Gateway, $800k per year until he reaches age 70, and $600k per year for the remainder of his or his wife’s life. Morris is currently 63 years old.

“[A]mid the chaos his conduct had unleashed upon Gateway and his community, Morris was laser focused on securing his financial future. Morris’s lawyers met with Gateway less than two months after his resignation and requested substantial financial commitments from Gateway,” the church’s application states.

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Gateway refused to pay the demands, citing contractual reasons and Morris’s “defiantly unapologetic posture” with respect to his actions.

According to the employment agreements between Morris and Gateway, the parties would follow a pathway of mediation, followed by arbitration if no agreement could be reached.

Gateway claims Morris went straight to demanding arbitration without satisfying the condition of agreeing to mediate. The church asserts it “did not foreclose a negotiated or mediated resolution altogether.”

It further argues that the entity that was agreed upon to handle the arbitration, ICC, is no longer in existence, but was sold to Ambassadors of Reconciliation.

Finally, the church argues that because Morris is facing criminal charges for the conduct that led to his resignation, the outcome and testimony in the criminal trial will “likely be important evidence in the arbitration,” while his presence at the criminal trial will likely pose significant scheduling issues for the arbitration.

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