LUBBOCK (TX)
Chron [Houston TX]
September 9, 2025
By Gwen Howerton
A Texas youth pastor accused of sexually abusing two girls and silencing them with threats of eternal damnation is facing more legal trouble.
On Aug. 26, a Lubbock County Grand Jury returned an indictment against youth pastor Luke Cunningham, charging him with 16 counts of sexual assault of a child. That’s on top of charges for aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault of a child that Cunningham was slapped with last year.
Cunningham’s charges stem from a litany of sexual assaults that prosecutors say occurred as far back as 2016. Last summer, news station KCBD revealed allegations that Cunningham had touched a girl’s genitals while serving as a youth pastor at Lubbock’s Turning Point Community Church in January of 2016. Prosecutors also say Cunningham later raped that same child in Oct. 2018, an instance during which he used his hands as deadly weapons. And Cunningham assaulted another child in January 2017. According to KCBD, Cunningham worked at Turning Point from 2016 to 2020 before taking a job at Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury.
The charges handed down by the grand jury at the end of August do not relate to new accusers, according to the Lubbock County District Attorney. Instead, the charges Cunningham faces stem from assaults that occurred between Sept. 2018 and April 2019. The new charges also feature a “bigamy enhancement,” a charge used in sexual assault prosecutions when either the victim or defendant was married when the assault occured.
Cunningham was arrested last summer and is being held in the Lubbock County Detention Center since. A trial is set for Dec. 1 of this year.
A long history of alleged grooming
During a bond reduction hearing in July of last year, Lubbock detectives and Assistant District Attorney Cassie Graham laid out grisly allegations against Cunningham that go back a decade.
Cunningham’s attorneys argued during the hearing that the former youth pastor and realtor was not a threat and should have his bond lowered from $500,000 to $100,000. But Graham told the court that Cunningham was a “violent offender,” and that he had repeatedly slapped and strangled his victims during sexual assaults. Prosecutors said that witnesses had testified that Cunningham frequently grew angry when girls in his youth groups didn’t give him attention; during one heated occasion, he allegedly pushed a person into a vending machine and threw them to the ground.
Detectives also testified that Cunningham’s victims believed they were in a relationship with him, and that he had promised repeatedly to leave his wife for them when they turned 18. Many of the assaults and incidents occurred during out-of-state church trips. On one church trip to New Mexico, Cunningham was told that it was inappropriate to let 16-year-olds sleep in his lap, but allegedly did so anyway. Cunningham shared inappropriate texts with underage girls in his care and tried to delete the texts. Court filings show evidence of Cunningham telling his victims to selectively reveal his conduct if their relationships were discovered, instructing them to say only that they “made out a couple of times” and that he touched their breasts only once. Cunningham also threatened his victims with eternal damnation if they screenshotted their texts or told their parents.
While all of the allegations of abuse by Cunningham happened from 2016 to 2019, Graham told the court in July 2024 that the district attorney’s office had also found a different victim in Dallas County who said Cunningham began grooming her as early as 2013.
One of Cunningham’s victims told her parents in 2019 that Cunningham had touched her while he worked as a youth pastor at Turning Point. Police said the girl’s parents confronted Cunningham but agreed not to press charges if he left the ministry altogether. Cunningham left the church two months later, but the victim eventually reported him to police in 2021.
When the investigation began, Cunningham and his family moved to Granbury, where he began working as a student minister at Lakeside Baptist Church. During a sexual abuse training, staff at Lakeside became aware of the Lubbock incident. Cunningham admitted to some of the abuse, and he was terminated.
A failed probe and international allegations
Detectives say that after Cunningham’s dismissal from Lakeside, another victim in Lubbock came forward. As a new investigation began, Cunningham sold his home in Granbury and moved to Shallowater, where the family had rented a home under his wife’s name. A U.S. Marshal assisting in the case arrested Cunningham in June 2024.
According to Baptist News Global, the pastors of Lakeside and Turning Point had discussed the allegations against Cunningham after his arrest. Per a statement provided to BNG, Turning Point Pastor Chuck Angel revealed that in 2022, the Lubbock County DA told Angel and church elders that the DA’s office was launching an investigation into allegations against Cunningham. At some point later, an investigator with the DA’s office told Angel that the probe had been dropped and no charges would be filed.
Cunningham worked at several churches in the North Texas area before moving to Lubbock. He was on staff at two churches in the Fort Worth area, one of which told Lubbock police that several allegations of misconduct were made. While working at North Fort Worth Baptist Church, staff said that Cunningham resigned suddenly, saying he wouldn’t be able to follow a church policy that forbade staff from being alone with students. Cunningham then moved to Lubbock shortly after.
In addition to the charges he faces in Texas, Cunningham faces federal charges. Shortly after his arrest in 2024, BNG also reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing Cunningham for possible international and interstate sex trafficking over his conduct on the out-of-state and international church trips. That includes ensuring that one of his victims would be on a mission trip to Guatemala.