Whistleblower Says He Was a ‘Fool’ to Trust Gateway Church With His Money

Back in 2010, Allen Shoulders was planning to retire in a few years from the international accounting firm where he was a partner. But when Tom Lane, then-senior executive pastor at the Dallas-based Gateway Church, approached Shoulders about becoming executive pastor of Gateway Global Ministries, Shoulders was intrigued.

Lane told Shoulders that in that role, he’d be responsible for giving away the $11 million to $22 million Gateway allocated for global missions each year, Shoulders told The Roys Report (TRR) in an exclusive interview. Being that Gateway founding pastor Robert Morris claimed the church gave 15% of its roughly $100 million in annual revenue to global missions, this meant $15 million would be at Shoulders’ disposal for international ministries each year.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s something I could get into,’” Shoulders said.

So, the career accountant took a “massive pay cut” and left his job at a Big 4 accounting firm in 2011 to work for Gateway as a pastor.

Three years later, Shoulders resigned—under pressure, he claims—from Gateway, disillusioned and deeply troubled.

According to his statement he released exclusively to TRR, the church never dispersed more than $3 million to global missions in any given year.

That means $12 million a year went unspent, causing Gateway’s global fund to balloon.

When Shoulders joined Gateway’s staff, the church’s global fund had an unspent balance around $20 million and continued to grow by $12 million to $16 million each year, Shoulders said. If the fund continued growing at the same rate after Shoulders’ departure in 2014, it would total more than $202 million today, Shoulders estimated.

Shoulders says he wonders what’s happened to that money. The church has not provided any audited statements, showing disbursements of global fund gifts over the years.

What the accountant does know is there were unexplained withdrawals from Gateway’s global fund, totaling $1.5 million. But when he urged the church’s top leaders—Morris and Lane—to investigate the withdrawals, the men instead told Shoulders they’d accept his resignation. (Shoulders had previously said he would resign if the matter was not addressed.)

For a decade, Shoulders claims he faithfully tithed to Gateway, giving “north of a half-million” dollars to the church. But when he left, Shoulders said he felt like a “fool” for trusting Gateway with his money.

“I spent a career not getting fooled,” said Shoulders, whose clients included some of America’s largest corporations. “And then, when you find out you’ve been deceived, it is that much harder when you’ve made a profession out of not allowing that to happen.”

Now, he is blowing the whistle on Gateway. His testimony has become the primary source for a proposed class-action suit, accusing the multi-site megachurch of committing financial fraud with members’ tithes.

TRR reached out to Gateway Spokesman Lawrence Swicegood Oct. 3 with a list of detailed questions regarding the allegations in this article.

We asked, for example, if Gateway had documentation refuting Shoulders’ claim that Gateway never disbursed more than $3 million to missions during Shoulders’ tenure there. We asked for an explanation for the two unexplained transfers Shoulders detected, totaling $1.5 million. We also asked Gateway to release the results of its audits over the years.

Swicegood responded that he would need more time “to research and respond to questions and allegations, some from over a decade ago.” He said Gateway would likely respond by the end of day Tuesday or Wednesday (Oct.9) before noon.

At 6:10 p.m. Wednesday, Swicegood emailed TRR, reiterating a previous claim by Gateway that the church has “annual independent comprehensive financial audits” from 2005 until now.

Swicegood also wrote, “Despite Allen’s claims, the results from the independent audits reveal that for the past 11 years Gateway’s Global mission budget has been on average 20%. The lowest year was 17% and the highest year was 24%.

“Over the past 11 years Gateway Church has given $171,000,000 to mission efforts locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. These funds do not include campus expansions. The first 10% of our missions budgets is allocated to Jewish missions.”

Swicegood did not release any of Gateway’s audits to TRR nor provide any documentation for his claims concerning Gateway’s missions giving. He also did not clarify what the percentages he quoted related to; whether the “missions budget” equaled disbursements to global missions; or what Gateway’s giving has been over the years to international missions alone.

Shoulders told TRR he didn’t go public earlier with his allegations against Gateway because he feared retaliation from powerful church. He also was under the impression that Gateway’s actions, though unethical, were not illegal.

However, Gateway recently hired law firm Haynes & Boone to investigate allegations that Robert Morris sexually molested an Oklahoma woman in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12 years old. Morris resigned from Gateway Church in June, soon after those allegations surfaced.

Shoulders told TRR he participated in the Haynes & Boone investigation. But before doing so, Shoulders obtained a release from Gateway protecting him from retaliation, which he shared with TRR.

Shoulders is not party to the lawsuit against Gateway but said he simply wants the truth to be revealed and Gateway to be held accountable. False giving claims?

In his statement, Shoulders explained that in 2011, he joined Gateway staff to “oversee with integrity” the tens of millions Gateway reportedly was giving to missions.

During Shoulders’ tenure, Gateway’s mission program was administered by Shoulders and a group of six pastors who would vet and approve gifts to “around 50 ministry partners in about 30 countries,” Shoulders wrote. kevin grove gateway Kevin Grove (Photo: Gateway Church)

Overseeing Shoulders and the other pastors was Elder and Executive Global Pastor Kevin Grove.

When Shoulders first came on staff, Gateway’s annual revenue was about $100 million and rose to about $120 million by 2014, his statement said.

Yet, according to Shoulders, “Global Ministries only gave away around $3 million a year, less than 20% of the amount members were told was generously being given by Gateway Global Ministries to mission partners.”

Shoulders said a reason that amount was so low was because “Grove put a cap on mission giving that amounted to around $10,000 per ministry per year, though a few recipients received more.”

TRR reached out to Grove through Swicegood for comment but received no response.

Juan Constantino, one of the six pastors who administered the Global Fund with Shoulders, corroborated Shoulders’ account.

Constantino said that most ministry partners received gifts under $10,000. Any gift of $25,000 had to be approved by the five to seven executive pastors at Gateway, he said. (These are not the six pastors who administrate the global fund, but the top pastors at the church, like Grove, Lane, and Morris.) Constantino added that any gift of $50,000 had to be approved by the elders—the group of seven to 13 men providing oversight to the church, including top pastors, Morris, Lane, Grove, and Steve Dulin.

“If I wanted to give one of my partners $15,000, it was kind of hard to get that through, even though the need was there,” Constantino said. “Very few of our ministries received large sums of money over $10,000.” constantino gateway GC

Constatino said he wasn’t privy to the total amount dispersed from the Global Fund each year but confirmed that Shoulders would have known that information.

Shoulders said that despite dispersing much less than 15% to missions, Morris would reiterate the 15% claim each year during Gateway’s “Global Weekend”—a gathering of worship leaders from around the world to worship “in unity.” This was “misleading at best,” Shoulders wrote.

He added that he spoke with Lane about the misleading claim after a first service around 2012. The next day, Lane “introduced the service saying that Gateway had given $14.9 million to the ‘Global Mission Fund’ rather than to missions,” Shoulders wrote. “This was more accurate, but nonetheless misleading in my opinion.” To the ‘Jew first’?

Shoulders also noted in his statement that Morris claimed Gateway gave “to the Jew first,” based on Morris’ reading of Romans 1:16. Instead, gifts designated for Jewish ministries often got lumped together with others in a “general fund,” Shoulders said.

In a 2023 video of Morris speaking at a conference for the Messianic church network, Tikkun Global, Morris claimed Gateway gave 10% of its tithes to missions “from day one.”

“But we took 10% of the 10% to give to Jewish ministry and that would be the first,” Morris said. “And now, we give 15% to missions and then 15% of that goes to Jewish ministry.”

Morris didn’t say when Gateway began giving 15% of its missions funds to Jewish ministries, but implied it was about 10 years ago when Gateway’s giving to missions surpassed $20 million a year. (Fifteen-percent of $20 million is $3 million.)

However, in Swicegood’s email to TRR, he said Gateway gave the “first 10%” to Jewish ministries, not 15%. TRR has asked Swicegood for a list of the Jewish ministries that received funds from Gateway, as well as the total amounts given, but Gateway has not provided those.

Shoulders said Gateway didn’t give anything close to 15% of the global fund to Jewish ministries during his tenure.

“On the contrary I, along with others, witnessed on multiple occasions when people would give a gift to Gateway and designate it for Jewish ministry, Kevin Grove would instead instruct Geoff Cohen, Jewish pastor at the time, to put it in the General Fund,” Shoulders wrote in his statement.

Shoulders added that he asked Grove to allow him to set up a Jewish Fund “as a designated fund to track these gifts,” but Grove denied his request. Without a designated fund, it was impossible to track donations to Jewish ministries.

TRR reached out for comment to Cohen, who now has a traveling teaching and evangelistic ministry.

Cohen said Grove never gave him instructions to put designated funds into the General Fund because Cohen was never given “that decision making ability.” Plus, Cohen said Grove “would never consult (with) what in the Gateway system was the ‘bottom of the rung’ as far as decision-making ability is concerned, which was the pastor of the department.”

When TRR asked Shoulders about Cohen’s statement, Shoulders said that on reflection, Cohen “may not have been privy to my discussion with Kevin.”

Cohen said he couldn’t remember the total amount Gateway gave to international Jewish ministries during his time at Gateway.

“What I can say is that there were a lot of nays without a clear explanation as to why,” Cohen said. “They were all valid needs and represented great ministries.”

When asked if he believed Gateway spent 15% of the global fund on Jewish ministries, Cohen said, “I imagine there was a lot of money designated for Jewish ministries which would fall into the 15% of the 15% . . . which would not be used for Jewish Ministries simply because a lot of requests were turned down. How those funds leftover were used or where they went or how much they were was completely out of my hands and knowledge.” ‘Do something really big for the kingdom’

In 2013, the unspent money in the Global Fund was “perhaps as much as $30 million,” Shoulders wrote.

So, Shoulders approached Tom Lane and suggested Gateway “could do something really big for the kingdom of God” with the accumulated money. Lane reportedly encouraged Shoulders to come up with a proposal.

Shoulders said he gathered the global pastors for a day-long meeting to brainstorm and develop a presentation for Gateway’s elders.

Constantino told TRR that he remembers the team coming up with a presentation of their “dreams” to give to the executive pastors and the elders.

Shoulders said he gave the written presentation to Grove, but Grove “tossed it on his credenza without looking at it,” Shoulders wrote. “The topic was never discussed again.”

Constantino said Shoulders “came back with his tail between his legs. ‘Forget about it. That money has other names to it,’” Constantino recalled Shoulders saying.

Shoulders said in early 2014, he noticed a problem reconciling the Global Fund balance. He instructed his assistant, Kim Lang, to go month by month to isolate the problem.

Lang then discovered “two journal entries dated December 31, 2013, amounting to approximately $1.5 million,” that was missing, Shoulders wrote.

TRR reached out to Lang for comment and she confirmed she found two withdrawals that could not be reconciled.

Shoulders said the entries appeared to “be an error,” so he went to the then-Gateway Executive Pastor of Administration Randy Bell.

“He told me that he did not know what they represented, but that they were elder-approved and he didn’t ask any questions,” Shoulders wrote. “I asked which elders approved it and he didn’t know, but said it came from Kevin Grove. This was extremely concerning since I was charged with the integrity of the accounting and hadn’t been informed.”

The next day, Shoulders said he approached Grove with his findings, “assuming it was a miscoding or error.”

“Instead Kevin, visibly enraged and with a raised voice, instructed me to quit reconciling the accounts,” Shoulders wrote. “This . . . was diametrically opposed to the reason I was hired in the first place, and I understood to be an order to violate the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) code of ethics which, as a CPA I was bound by.”

Shoulders said he then “began to dig” and found “similar unexplained entries in early 2014.”

Shoulders then met with Tom Lane to explain his concerns about the financial discrepancies and give him “a three-page list of concerns” about Grove.

Those concerns are explained in Shoulders’ full statement but were redacted before releasing the statement to TRR for publication. Shoulders declined to comment on the other concerns about Grove at this time.

Shoulders said when he met with Lane, who has since left Gateway and now runs the Executive Leadership Institute, Lane “listened intently.”

Shoulders said he told Lane that if the matter was not addressed, he would resign. Lane then asked if he could share Shoulders’ concerns with Morris, and Shoulders gave Lane permission, according to the statement.

Shoulders said he met with Lane three days later and expected Lane to tell him Gateway would be investigating. Instead, Lane said he had spoken to Morris “and we agreed to accept your resignation.”

Shoulders wrote that he “was stunned, because I instantly realized that this was much worse than I had thought—my concerns weren’t just being ignored, they were being buried.

“I began to question whether Gateway, who claimed publicly to be the most generous church in the world, was privately taking the money and using it for purposes contrary to what Gateway had represented to donors? (emphasis in original statement)”

Lane reportedly gave Shoulders a typed sheet with a timeline for his transition off staff and a statement, which Lane reportedly read to Gateway staff. Shoulders’ attorney gave TRR a copy of this sheet.

“On April 14 Allen announced his retirement from Gateway Staff effective May 15th,” the statement reads. It adds, “The timeline being established will allow him the flexibility to be available to assist (his wife) in her recovery from surgery planned for the middle of May.”

According to Juan Constantino, who was present for the staff announcement, “What publicly was said to pastors is that he left because his wife was sick, and he was going home to take care of his wife.”

Shoulders said his wife’s routine surgery had nothing to do with his “retirement” and he felt it was deceptive to say so. He added that his wife felt violated by Lane’s disclosure. Nevertheless, Shoulders resigned as instructed.

TRR reached out for comment to Lane, who’s one of the defendants named in the lawsuit against Gateway, along with Morris, Grove, and former Executive Pastor Steve Dulin.

Lane’s lawyer, David Joe, replied that “commenting on specific allegations in a litigation proceeding before responsive pleadings . . . is generally imprudent.”

Shoulders wrote in his statement that his “immediate reaction” after his meeting with Lane “was to take what I knew to the FBI or Texas Rangers and request an investigation of Gateway Church.”

But Shoulders said an attorney told him then that it is not illegal for a church to lie to its members about what it’s doing with its money and that reporting would do no good. Shoulders told TRR that had Gateway been a public company, he “certainly” would have reported it to authorities.

TRR reached out to Lu Pham, who is representing the plaintiffs suing Gateway for fraud. Pham said he disagrees with the advice Shoulders was given.

According to a publication by Philanthropy Roundtable, Texas has adopted much of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA).

This act allows charities to alter the intended use of donations only if they “deem the original purpose of the donation to be unattainable, wasteful or impractical to maintain.” But charities can make these alterations only if the donation is less than $25,000 and more than 20 years has passed since the donation was made.

Shoulders said when he resigned, Gateway gave him an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to sign. Shoulders said he wrote on the NDA that he would not do anything to violate the AICPA code of professional ethics. He said he doesn’t have the NDA and isn’t sure if he signed it. Either way, the recent release he obtained from Gateway would supersede the NDA, he said.

Shoulders said he was “paid according to his employment agreement” but doesn’t recall receiving a severance.

As reported previously by TRR, Gateway Elder Tra Willbanks stated last weekend that Gateway has “independently audited financial statements since 2005,” which have never revealed “any wrongdoing.”

However, Shoulders told TRR that to his knowledge and experience, Gateway did not conduct any audits during his time on staff from 2011—2014. Instead, the church conducted financial reviews, which “are not designed to detect errors or fraud.”

“I was an auditor, and I can say unequivocally that Gateway Global Ministries was not subjected to any audit procedures during my tenure,” Shoulders said. tra willbanks gateway

Swicegood, however, said in his email Wednesday that Shoulders’ claims are “absolutely false (emphasis in original).”

“Gateway did in fact have and continues to have annual independent comprehensive financial audits—not reviews as Allan (sic) claimed,” Swicegood wrote. “Every year these audits did in fact include every department of Gateway Church including Gateway Global Ministries.”

Swicegood said the audits were conducted by Guinn Smith & Co. from 2005—2007 and by Capin Crouse from 2008 on.

When asked about Swicegood’s claim, Shoulders said Swicegood had essentially accused Capin Crouse of conducting audits that don’t meet accepted auditing standards.

According to Shoulders, auditing standards require auditors to test internal controls. But during his tenure at Gateway, Shoulders said he never saw an auditor nor was he interviewed by an auditor, and the controls he put in place were never tested.

As executive pastor of Global Ministries, Shoulders said if there had been a study of internal controls, “I certainly would have known about it.”

Shoulders said he expressed his concerns to Haynes & Boone lawyers on August 28. Shoulders said he gave the lawyers permission to call him with follow-up questions but hasn’t heard from them since.

In his written statement, Shoulders urged Gateway Church members to demand “at least ten to twelve years” of financial audits to verify Gateway’s financial statements. He also urged them to call for forensic audits “to determine whether the allegations of misappropriation, fraud, and deception are true.”

Last weekend, Willbanks said Gateway had “decided to hire a third party, independent accounting firm to complete a forensic analysis of our finances.”

Willbanks said the church would “report back” to the congregation when the work is finished, but did not say whether the church would make the firm’s complete findings public.

Given what he’s observed, Shoulders told TRR he’s skeptical the church will be transparent.

“I wanted to believe, like many other people, that (Gateway) was the church that I had always dreamed of going to,” Shoulders said. “When you find out it’s not, it really creates some cognitive dissonance.”

He added, “I still love God more than ever. But now I’m asking myself: How did I get taken in by something that wasn’t real? And I’m sure there are tens of thousands of other people asking the same question.”

. What A Fool Believes

. Everybody Plays The Fool

. What Kind of Fool Am I?

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

What is it with Christians and their hangups with money? Is it like that with religions as a rule? I know there’s plenty of truth about Jews and money hangups. I just don’t get. I consider myself very charitable and moderately faithful Christian. My Dad was hard-core Bob Jones Master of Divinity and he was the cheapest person I’ve just about ever known. Always asking other people how much they made. Complaining about costs. Always put exactly ONE dollar in the offering plate every Sunday.

A sheep is sheared every bill a second then when you get done shearing them you can slaughter them and eat them.

6 posted on 10/16/2024 1:49:15 AM PDT by steve8714 (Evidently the Oxford comma is racist, sexist, or homophobic. You decide which.)

While much of this may have a grain of truth, I don’t trust Julie Roys one bit to spin it in an honest light. She is the most devious Christian hater out there with a “critic’s” website. Leftie to the core.

And I can’t stand it when faux “reporters” like this ignorantly lump every square foot of real estate in the DFW metro area as “Dallas.” This isn’t a “Dallas-based” church, it’s in Southlake, which isn’t even in Dallas County.

I keep saying religion is free and your beliefs are between you and God. That doesn’t cost a damn cent and I damn sure wouldn’t give 10% of my earnings to support any Catholic church and help fund the Vatican or any other religion.

I’m charitable but I give to charities that I know where the money is being spent.

These super churches and such are like NFL teams (and high schools here in Texas for that fact) they want you to pay for their big stadiums.

10 posted on 10/16/2024 4:49:22 AM PDT by AppyPappy (Biden told Al Roker "America is back". Unfortunately, he meant back to the 1970's)

“wouldn’t give 10% of my earnings to support any Catholic church and help fund the Vatican or any other religion.”

Catholics are smart over the last ten or so years when we donate we mark it “building fund” or “school fund” when we drop it in the offering plate. That means the money must stay in that parish and not leave and go else where. If you just drop money in and not mark where it goes to then it leaves that parish and goes to the diocese. Why do you think so many are going bankrupt from the lawsuits? Catholics are not going to fund that.

So you actually trust the church to use the money as directed by a note on an envelope?

Faith I’m guessing.

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