For most of this past summer, we’ve been treated to an almost daily litany of horrors coming from a Texas megachurch whose founding pastor was a top spiritual advisor to Donald Trump. In case you missed it, back in June, Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake—near Fort Worth—was cut down to size when a four-decade-old lie came to light. From 1982 to 1987, he groomed and molested a 12-year-old Oklahoma girl, but insisted it was only a “moral failure” with a “young lady.” In the face of criticism from all sides, Morris resigned.
Since fellow Kossack TheCriticalMind diaried about it here, we’ve learned this was merely the tip of the iceberg at Gateway. In July, CBS News reported that Gateway had settled two lawsuits. One claimed church officials covered up a youth pastor sexually assaulting a girl; another claimed a pastor sexually harassed and assaulted a former administrative assistant. Later in July, the head of Gateway’s prison ministry was exposed as a child sex offender—and Gateway was evasive at best about whether any members knew.
All of this ought to make you wonder how a church this corrupt can be allowed to exist. A sharp contrast comes from north of the border. One of the largest churches in Canada, The Meeting House, was recently forced to fold the tent—and we may have Canada’s answer to Mother Jones to thank for it.
For a quarter-century, The Meeting House was pastored by Bruxy Cavey, a longhaired bear of a man who was in many ways a Canadian version of Bill Hybels and Steven Furtick rolled into one. According to a 2023 profile in Toronto Life, Cavey billed himself as an “anti-celebrity pastor” who even went as far as to downsize his house as his church spawned 20 remote campuses across Ontario in addition to its flagship in Oakville, near Toronto.
In 2022, however, Cavey was brought down hard after a former member claimed he’d maintained a sexual relationship with her for five years. After an independent investigation found that he’d “abused his power and authority” when what began as a “clergy-counselor relationship” mushroomed into a sexual one, church overseers told him to resign or be fired. He resigned.
By June, the church had received 38 reports of sexual misconduct and sexual abuse against Cavey and other former pastors. By August 2022, further investigation had substantiated three more accusations against Cavey, one of which involved a minor. Church officials finally admitted that the incident that forced him out amounted to clergy sexual abuse, not merely an abuse of power.
Fast forward to this past June, when The Meeting House announced it was pausing all public ministry at least through the end of July after losing two critical pieces of insurance coverage. Namely, Abuse Liability, which covers losses related to physical and/or sexual abuse, as well as Employment Practices Liability, which covers losses related to violations of employee rights. The head of an insurance agency that covers churches told Christianity Today that from where he was sitting, The Meeting House’s efforts to reform itself weren’t enough to appease potential insurers.
Insurers may decline to provide liability coverage for ministries that don’t have solid policies to handle abuse, according to Charlie Cutler, president of ChurchWest Insurance Services, an agency insuring more than 4,000 ministries in California. To him, it’s a stewardship issue: Other churches’ premiums shouldn’t be spent covering another organization’s repeated mistakes.
“If there’s been a pattern of abuse, a pattern of bad governance in the ministry, you’re going to have a hard time getting coverage,” he said. “Every time there’s a claim, it’s going back to these offering plates at other ministries. They’re wanting everybody else to pay before they’ve proven that the problems have been addressed.”
I’d wondered—what had insurers so spooked? I suspect at least part of the answer came in a March 2024 article from The Walrus, an independent non-profit magazine whose model appears similar to that of Mother Jones. That article revealed that The Meeting House was facing two lawsuits filed in fall of 2023 alleging that the church created an environment that allowed the plaintiffs to be molested by former youth pastor Kieran Naidoo. The first plaintiff, “Amber,” claims church officials failed to properly vet Naidoo or warn others about him. The second, “Jasmine,” claims the church failed to protect her or properly respond to her claims. Naidoo was forced to resign in 2008 after another youth leader saw sexually explicit texts on his phone. However, he continued working at other churches for another three years until his then-wife saw sexually explicit images and videos of girls who were in The Meeting House’s youth group during his tenure. In 2014, he pleaded guilty to multiple charges involving Amber, Jasmine and two other women and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
That article in The Walrus also revealed that at the time these suits were filed, The Meeting House was facing third lawsuit related to another former youth pastor, David Churchill. An unidentified woman claimed Churchill abused her numerous times over the years—and that church officials created an environment that allowed this depravity to be covered up. Churchill was forced to resign in 2014 after it learned of the relationship. He pleaded guilty to sexual assault in 2015 and was sentenced to six months in jail. Despite this, The Meeting House convinced a judge to throw the suit out in January 2024.
I have to wonder—were these lawsuits unrelated to Cavey a fatal blow to The Meeting House’s credibility? It sure looks like it, given that in almost no time at all in Internet terms, The Meeting House was forced to go on what it called a “pause,” and held out the prospect it may not return. According to Religion News Service, the church returned with a livestream on August 1, but announced later that month that it would permanently halt operations on August 29.
Earlier, I noted in my Substack that it was rather interesting that a megachurch could effectively be brought to its knees by its insurance providers. After all, this move apparently forced The Meeting House’s leadership to ask whether this church could even exist, rather than ask if it could be reformed. But now it looks like we know why insurers got so spooked—classic shoe-leather journalism. If only media outlets on this side of the border would do the same, perhaps Gateway would get the same treatment.
