COLORADO SPRINGS (CO)
The Roys Report [Chicago IL]
June 20, 2025
By Julie Roys
Brady Boyd, embattled senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has resigned, elders announced at a service Friday night, according to KOAA-TV .
In a statement, the elders said they did not believe Boyd’s earlier claim that he didn’t know about Morris’s child abuse until recently and asked him to resign, which Boyd did Wednesday night. Associate Pastor Daniel Grothe has been named interim pastor.
“Recently, Brady has insisted that he was unaware until 2024 that Miss Clemishire was 12 years old at that time that Morris had abused her in the 80s,” the elders stated. “We believe this to be inaccurate. Brady also made statements in his public address to the congregation on June 8 that the Board of Elders know to be inaccurate.”
The elders added that “trust is the currency of leadership. When Brady recently told our congregation inaccurately that he was unaware of certain details regarding Morris’s past abuse, trust was broken.”
This news comes 14 days after The Roys Report (TRR) first published evidence that Boyd knew at least 18 years ago that Dallas-based Gateway Church founder Robert Morris had sexually abused Clemishire from age 12 to 16. Despite this alleged knowledge, Boyd made Morris an overseer at New Life in 2007.
Morris is currently facing five criminal child sex abuse charges in Oklahoma. Last summer, he resigned from Gateway, one of the largest churches in the U.S., following allegations he sexually abused Cindy Clemishire for four years in the 1980s, beginning when she was just 12.
The evidence indicating that Boyd knew about Morris’s past sex crimes were included in court documents filed recently by Morris in his lawsuit with Gateway concerning retirement funds.
The documents note that Clemishire’s sister, Karen Black, met with New Life leaders in August 2007, as the church was considering hiring Boyd. At the time, Boyd was senior associate pastor at Gateway under Morris. And Black told TRR that she feared if New Life hired Boyd, Morris would gain influence over New Life, where she was a member.
Black said she met with New Life’s pastoral search committee and told them all the details about Morris’s sexual abuse of her sister in the 1980s. That committee included both lay and staff leaders at New Life, including current New Life executive pastors Lance Coles and Brian Newberg.
The committee reached out immediately to Gateway elders, Boyd said in a message to his congregation Sunday, June 8. Boyd said the elders confirmed to the committee that the allegations about Morris were true but claimed the matter had been reported and Morris had been restored.
At the time of the search committee’s 2007 inquiry, Boyd was an elder at Gateway. Despite this, Boyd told TRR he did not know about Morris’s child abuse 18 years ago.
He also denied ever receiving an August 2007 email included in Morris’s court documents that was addressed to Boyd and several other Gateway elders from Elder Tom Lane. The letter detailed a meeting of Gateway elders, Morris, and a lawyer regarding how to respond to Black’s disclosure to New Life’s search committee.
When asked how he could miss the crucial email, Boyd told TRR, “It was a crazy season.”
In Morris’s court documents, he also claimed that he told all the Gateway elders details of his child abuse in 2005 and 2007, when Boyd served on the board. Exhibits in Morris’s filing included emails between certain Gateway elders and lawyers in 2005 and 2007, corroborating this claim.
New Life proceeded to hire Boyd in 2007 and made Morris an overseer at the church.
Addressing the allegations in TRR’s June 6 article, Boyd told his congregation, “I would never, ever put a known pedophile in a place of authority in the church. Never, would I ever do that to you.”
This article has been updated.