Some members of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, mounted a strong protest outside the church on Sunday, a week after elders announced they asked Senior Pastor Brady Boyd to resign and claimed he lied about his knowledge of Gateway Church founder Robert Morris’ alleged sexual abuse of Cindy Clemishire beginning when she was 12 in the 1980s.
Angie Ragsdale, one of the church’s members who protested Boyd’s resignation, told KKTV that her former pastor didn’t deserve to be ousted from his position over Morris’ alleged crime.
“He’s been the pastor of New Life for the past 18 years, and he’s a beautiful, wonderful, upstanding man of God who was forced to resign due to somebody else’s issues from a long time ago, and we just don’t think that that’s fair or right,” Ragsdale, who has attended New Life with her family for 27 years, said.
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Joan Mills, another protester, praised Boyd for the work he has done not just for his church family but for Colorado.
“He knows he did wrong putting trust in Pastor Morris, but Pastor Morris hasn’t been at this church in a long time, so I just feel like it was wrong what was done,” Mills said.
New Life Church elders announced on June 22 that Boyd, who had served as the church’s senior pastor since August 2007, officially resigned on June 18, making way for Daniel Grothe to step in as the church’s new senior pastor.
Boyd stepped into the senior pastor role at New Life Church after the church’s former pastor, Ted Haggard, resigned in 2006 after confessing to “sexual immorality” with a male escort and illicit drug use.
The elders said that when Boyd was being considered for the role, the church’s pastoral search committee was informed about Morris’ sexual abuse of Clemishire when she was 12 and he was about 20 or 21. Boyd served at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, from 2001 to 2007 during Morris’ 24-year tenure, which ended with his resignation in June 2024.
“To report what they had heard and inquire further regarding the allegations of abuse, New Life representatives contacted the Board of Elders of Gateway. Our church was informed that Morris’ past abuse was known to Ms. Clemishire’s family, Gateway elders, news media, and legal counsel. Gateway also informed New Life that Morris had been through a restoration process and, inaccurately, that Ms. Clemishire and her parents had supported Morris’ return to ministry,” New Life Church elders said.
“Based on that information, New Life believed that Ms. Clemishire’s abuse was known by the relevant persons and the search committee concluded that Morris’ conduct from 25 years earlier, while terrible, did not involve Brady and did not impair his fitness to serve as our Senior Pastor. The search committee recommended Brady for the role and New Life Church welcomed him in August 2007.”
The elders stated that they later learned Boyd had made inaccurate statements about the situation as recently as June 8.
“Recently, Brady has insisted that he was unaware until 2024 that Ms. Clemishire was 12 at the time that Morris abused her in the 1980s. We believe that to be inaccurate. Brady also made statements in his public address to the congregation on June 8 that the Board of Elders knows to be inaccurate,” the elders said.
“Brady had nothing at all to do with Robert Morris’ past abuse. Still, we believe that trust is the currency of leadership. When Brady recently told our congregation, inaccurately, that he was unaware of certain details regarding Morris’ past abuse, trust was broken, and we, the Board of Elders, asked Brady to resign.”
Last Saturday, Dean Miles, who had worked on Boyd’s security team for more than 10 years before resigning in 2018, alleged on X that Boyd is a master manipulator.
“I was on the inside for 10+ years. Part of the security team. Responsible for Brady Boyd’s safety. No one told more half-truths. Master of manipulation. Always the victim. In 2018, I handed in my badge. Enough was enough. Leadership is earned in truth, not preserved in spin. I stayed silent for too long. No more,” he wrote.
Clemishire, now 55, recently filed a defamation lawsuit against Gateway Church and Morris, seeking over $1 million. The lawsuit names Clemishire and her father, Jerry Lee Clemishire, as plaintiffs. The filing alleges that Morris and Gateway Church leaders mischaracterized the abuse Clemishire suffered as a consensual “relationship” with a “young lady” instead of the sexual assault of a child.
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