Pastor Landon Schott says God has forgiven Gateway founder Robert Morris, looking to Easter release

God has forgiven convicted Gateway Church founder Robert Morris, who is serving time in an Oklahoma jail for child sex abuse, and is expected to be released during Easter, according to his “spiritual son” and protégé, Pastor Landon Schott, of the multi-campus Mercy Culture Church in Texas.

Schott, who planted Mercy Culture Church — a non-denominational, Charismatic congregation — after he was blessed by Morris in 2017, revealed in a post on Facebook that he visited Morris in jail on Tuesday and had a “deeply personal” experience.

He also revealed that when Morris began his six-month sentence in Osage County Jail on Oct. 2, 2025, for child sex abuse, God told him, “I have forgiven him.”

“Today was deeply personal for me. I visited Pastor Robert Morris in prison. Before we ever started Mercy Culture Church, the Lord spoke to me clearly. He told me to go get Pastor Robert Morris’ blessing. I obeyed. That assignment turned into a year internship at Gateway Church. The elders laid hands on Heather and me and prayed over Mercy Culture before it was ever public,” Schott wrote.

“Years later I asked the Lord, ‘Why did You send me to Gateway?’ He said, ‘To save your future.’ There were principles, structures, and guardrails I needed to see up close. Things I believe will help keep Mercy Culture healthy, faithful, and steady for generations. God was protecting something I could not yet see,” he continued before sharing how God declared Morris’ forgiveness.

“The day he (Morris) went to jail, I was on a prayer run during my daily encounter. The Lord asked me, ‘Do you know what day it is?’ I checked the calendar. It was Rosh Hashanah. The Hebrew new year. The beginning of the Days of Awe leading into Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And the Lord spoke to me, ‘I have forgiven him,’” he recalled.

Schott added that he didn’t share the message publicly and just carried it quietly until he realized that Morris’ six-month sentence is expected to end during the week of Easter.

“I found out he would be released the week of Easter and Passover. The week we celebrate the Lamb. The blood. The cross. The resurrection. You cannot script that. Even in this situation, the gospel is being preached. Atonement. Forgiveness. Resurrection. New beginnings,” he wrote.

The Mercy Culture leader then noted in an apparent nod to his spiritual father that while sin is serious, "mercy triumphs over judgment."

“Today I had the honor of sitting with Pastor Robert. I am grateful for the role he played in my life. I am grateful for what I learned. And I am grateful that the story of grace is still being written,” he wrote, quoting Matthew 25:36, 40.

“Sin is serious. It grieves the heart of God. But the cross is more serious. The blood of Jesus is stronger than failure. Mercy triumphs over judgment. I do not believe we can preach mercy at our altars if that same mercy is not available to those who once stood behind them,” he asserted.

“The grace of God is not selective. It covered David after moral failure. It met Moses after murder. It restored Samson after compromise. Failure does not get the final word in a surrendered life. I believe in repentance. I believe in redemption. I believe God restores what the enemy tries to ruin. I believe no one is beyond the reach of the mercy of God.”

Less than a year after he resigned over allegations he sexually abused Cindy Clemishire during multiple years in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12, Morris, who founded Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, was indicted and convicted on those charges in 2025.

In March 2025, Morris was indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child by a multi-county grand jury in Oklahoma. He would formally surrender and enter a not-guilty plea in court just days after the indictment.

On Oct. 2, however, Morris changed his plea to guilty in exchange for a 10-year suspended prison sentence with the condition that he serve the first six months of that time in a county jail. He is currently in custody at the Osage County Jail in Oklahoma.

"He simply accepted responsibility for his crime from the mid-1980s and pled guilty. He pled guilty because he wanted to accept responsibility for his conduct," Morris' lawyer, Bill Mateja, said in a statement to The Christian Post at the time. "While he believes that he long since accepted responsibility in the eyes of God — and that Gateway Church was a manifestation of that acceptance — he readily accepted responsibility in the eyes of the law by virtue of his guilty plea."

"He also pled guilty for the sake of finality. Not only did he want to bring this legal matter to a quick end for his own sake and that of his family, he brought it to a quick end for the sake of Ms. Clemishire and her family, and he sincerely hopes that his plea and jail sentence, coupled with probation, brings Ms. Clemishire and her family the finality that they might need."