TX Youth Pastor Arrested for Sexual Assault of a Child
The accused had reportedly served at four different churches around the state.
A former youth pastor at four different churches around Texas was arrested on June 19 for the sexual assault of a child.
Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas
Luke Cunningham was arrested by United States marshals near Lubbock. Law enforcement added two additional charges after arresting him—another for sexual assault of a child and one for aggravated sexual assault of an adult, Baptist News Global reported.
Cunningham had served at four Baptist churches around the state: Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas; Turning Point Community Church in Lubbock; North Fort Worth Baptist Church in Fort Worth; and Agape Baptist Church—a now-defunct church that was in Fort Worth.
In a statement to KDFW, Lakeside Baptist in Granbury said that on June 2, it learned of accusations against Cunningham, adding that it immediately suspended Cunningham and began its investigation.
Lakeside said it reported its investigative findings to law enforcement and fired Cunningham. It also made Turning Point Community Church aware of the accusations against Cunningham, Baptist News Global reported.
Turning Point Pastor J.D. Small said the church has reported allegations about potential victims to the Lubbock Police Department and is cooperating with the investigation, adding that Turning Point had no prior knowledge of Cunningham’s alleged crimes before employing him.
“While Luke served on our staff, we received no complaints, no allegations, nor had any suspicion of wrongdoing,” Small told Baptist News Global. “All allegations that are surfacing have been brought to our attention after Luke’s employment, not during or before.”
Luke Cunningham
Lakeside Baptist says an abuse registry at the denominational level might have prevented this situation.
“We believe that, if the Southern Baptist Convention had a working database for offenders, we would likely have never been exposed to Mr. Cunningham,” Lakeside Baptist told KDFW.
“We plan to do everything possible to encourage national leaders to exercise their spiritual responsibility, identify perpetrators in the churches, and stop this from happening again,” it added.
Two years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention created a task force with the charges of creating resources to help churches deal with abuse, publishing a database of abusive pastors and finding permanent funding and long-term plans for abuse reforms.
However, at the annual meeting of the Convention earlier this month, the task force reported that it was unable to fully create the abuse registry.
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