A Granbury youth pastor is accused of sexually assaulting a child.
Luke Cunningham, who served as the student minister at Lakeside Baptist Church, was arrested Wednesday near Lubbock. The 41-year-old pastor faces two counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault.
In a statement to its members, Lakeside said it received information June 2 from outside the church that Cunningham was accused of inappropriate conduct with a minor at another church. Lakeside said it immediately launched an investigation and suspended Cunningham. Within days, the statement said, the church determined evidence warranted firing the pastor, and it reported its findings to authorities.
Lakeside said it is not aware of assaults at its church, but it asked members to report any incidents of sexual abuse and said professional counselors are available.
Before Granbury, Cunningham served as student pastor at Turning Point Church in Lubbock from 2016 to 2020.
Turning Point said in a written statement that it received no complaints during Cunningham’s employment, nor did it know of allegations of previous misconduct. The church said it has no further information about the alleged abuse.
“We are devastated by these allegations and feel enormous grief for anyone who is a potential victim,” the Lubbock church said. “Our hope is to provide any assistance we can offer to any victims of sexual abuse to find the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual peace needed to heal and move forward.”
It’s not clear if Cunningham, who is in jail in Lubbock County, has retained an attorney.
This case comes days after Robert Morris, a prominent Southlake pastor, resigned after sex abuse allegations from the 1980s surfaced. Morris, the 62-year-old pastor of Gateway Church, is accused of sexually abusing an Oklahoma woman, who is now in her 50s, when she was between the ages of 12 and 16.
In its statement, Lakeside in Granbury said it would reevaluate and adopt more rigorous processes to identify predators. It urged the Southern Baptist Convention, to which it belongs, to take a more aggressive stance against sexual abuse, including adopting a sex offender database.
“We believe that, if the Southern Baptist Convention had a working database for offenders, we would likely have never been exposed to Mr. Cunningham,” the church said. “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.”
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., has faced scrutiny for its handling of sexual abuse allegations.
An independent firm published a report in 2022 that found the Southern Baptist Convention stonewalled and ignored survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost 20 years. A few months later, the Department of Justice began a federal investigation into sex abuse within the denomination.
