How Steve Morgan’s Story was Told
Last week, Leaving the Network shared several articles about Steve Morgan’s arrest for allegedly committing “aggravated criminal sodomy” (a felony) against a 15-year old boy in 1986 in Kansas. This included Andrew Lumpe’s story. I also shared an article about the coverup that I witnessed at Vista Church while I was still there. I’ve also summarized the events and why they matter as best I can. The Network has responded in a letter distributed at Joshua Church (Austin, TX), where Steve Morgan is Lead Pastor (shared by Leaving the Network). That letter is addressed to members of all of the churches in The Network. Casey Raymer, Lead Pastor at Vine Church (Carbondale, IL) also addressed this in remarks (shared on this site) delivered at Team Vine.
There has been some confusion over how and why this happened when it did, and what the importance of it was. In fact, one of the narratives is that somehow Andrew Lumpe published this information in a breach of confidence with Steve Morgan. Casey Raymer said this at Team Vine on Sunday, July 10th, 2022 (just after the 8-minute mark):
Some of you might feel really angry. Those of you that know Steve well, and the degree of sacrifice that he's made over the years, the decades of service that he's offered to Jesus in the church, I think how could somebody that Steve confessed to make his sin public 36 years later, you know, and bring tremendous shame on him for the rest of his life amongst his closest family and friends, that everything had already been handled according to all the legal and biblical guidelines.
This blog post aims to create a record of what happened on my side, and show how that narrative is false in a couple different ways. I’ve drawn on my own emails and texts and am sharing exact times of what I knew and when. I have not collaborated with Leaving the Network on this post, but will update it if they feel I have left any critical information out or gotten anything factually incorrect.
I strongly recommend reading this article on publicly reporting abuse, by The Gospel Coalition: Reporting Abuse Shouldn’t Be Controversial. It’s Biblical. (thegospelcoalition.org). I read it sometime last year, and it was the single most important article I’ve read in understanding that not only can the abuses of Network leadership be reported publicly, they should be. I am aware that the Network is using Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Timothy 5:19 to try to say otherwise, and I will cover those in another post.
Finishing this introduction, No attempt here is made to deny or minimize or otherwise reduce the value of the efforts of LTN and Andrew Lumpe - they did a ton of work researching and writing everything up and had incredibly valuable context. The amount of labor I spent on this was small by comparison.
Care for your health
And as always, please take care of yourself as you read this post and others like it. It’s a lot to take in, particularly if you are a long-time Network member or even church planter or staff member. Take deep breaths, breaks, and ensure you have support. Much of this is not easy to hear. More info in the “Your Health” section of this other blog post.
What Happened
The Background
I had been aware of Steve Morgan’s alleged sexual misconduct with a minor since June 2021. Andrew Lumpe told me about it when we reconnected after I left Vista Church (San Luis Obispo, CA) in April 2021. However, at the time, there was a big piece missing: any official records. I believed Lumpe, but he asked me and my wife not to tell anyone, and we did not. While at Vista Church, I witnessed (and unwittingly took part) in efforts to cover-up Steve Morgan’s past and shun Andrew Lumpe, even though I didn’t know what Lumpe was saying.
I was aware that Lumpe was making efforts to locate corroborating documents, and indeed nail down the story well enough to publish. One does not publish a story like this unless you can back it up. If you’re wrong, even in part, you could easily be sued for defamation. For the record, I’m aware of that with every single word I publish on this site. One of the reasons I use my name is because that way, if I were lying, The Network (or parties within it) could take legal action. The fact that they don’t should be an indication that they know that I’m telling the truth. But I’m also very careful to use words like “most” instead of “all” or “some” instead of “most”. As a Christian, I also want to be generous with my speech, not exaggerating or using hyperbole, so you’ll see most of my language has a (I hope) cautious tone. If it doesn’t, let me know (some have!). I believed that those efforts had turned up some additional evidence, but not exactly a “smoking gun.” One of the issues, as noted on LTN, was that they believed that the incident occurred in Michigan. For a while we thought the court records had simply been destroyed or sealed.
I always knew I wanted to tell the story of what was said about Andrew Lumpe at Vista. I felt it was tremendously damaging to him and his family. I also feel that it is a clear example of Luke Williams (Lead Pastor) and Mark Guiles (non-staff overseer) lying or badly misleading people in order to get them to stop talking to Lumpe. This behavior is not acceptable (and disqualifying, in my book, even if someone had lied to them first), and the people they misled were Small Group Leaders — supposed to be trusted. Instead, Luke Williams used our trust in him to encourage us to avoid Andrew Lumpe, and then I told another member to do the same.
Lumpe had given me permission to share my part of the story, but without being able to talk about what Steve Morgan had allegedly done, I felt that the story would ring hollow and just invite wild speculation about Morgan that would be unfair without actually naming what he did. I also couldn’t prove that Williams and Guiles had misled anyone — I just thought they had.
I always knew that if we had hard evidence of what Steve had allegedly done, I’d want to publish it because it would show the grievousness of what was done to Lumpe (and anyone he had a relationship with) at Vista and after. But I didn’t have evidence, so I waited.
In that time, I heard at least one additional corroboration of the story, but it was verbal and again - I just couldn’t go with that.
Everything Changed
On Wednesday, July 6th, 2022, everything changed. What follows is the chronology of my side of what happened. All times listed are Pacific Time.
Wednesday, July 6th, 2022
11:52 AM: I receive an email from a tipster. Leaving the Network has described the tipster (with their permission, so I won’t attempt to rewrite it) as:
A person close to the situation who knew Steve during the time period of the assault, and who is currently very worried about the well-being and safety of current Network church members, emailed the Leaving the Network site details about the alleged sexual assault including the case number, criminal charge, and background details which aligned with other known information.
I can corroborate that the tipster expressed all of the same to me.
The most important thing was that they gave me the location: Johnson County, Kansas.
I was eating lunch at Chick-Fil-A at the time, and was stunned. I went home to research. The first thing I did was to attempt to verify that the person was real. I searched their name and found enough to make me believe they were a real person.
Second, I began researching the court records. The Johnson County courts website is… not modern. Believe it or not, I actually spent a bit of time trying to corroborate that I had the right site before I even performed a search. I didn’t want to fall into some kind of scheme to get me to bite at a tip that wasn’t real in order to ruin my credibility. Two important sites:
After coming to conclusion that the search site was legit, I entered last name “Morgan” and first name “Steven”. I intentionally avoided entering the case number given, because I wanted to show that if someone knew the location they could find it just with his name. I was successful. I found four records (you can try it yourself!):
Let’s go through all four (remember, Johnson County, Kansas has a population of nearly 600,000 people).
93CR02689: The date of birth on this record is too old to be the Steve Morgan.
K0053903: The tipster told me the the incident had happened in 1986/87, and this record matches (screenshot below).
K0033500: If you look at the case history, this happened in 1978 when the Steve Morgan was only 14, so seems very unlikely to be him. I’ll mention this case in a moment.
00TR00308: The date of birth on this record is too old to be the Steve Morgan.
Here’s what you find if you click the link for K0053903 (obviously the note on 7/6/22 hadn’t happened yet - more on that in a minute - it’s not nefarious)
Clicking “Charges” gave me this:
And I searched for “Kansas Code 21-3506” and discovered that it was “Aggravated Criminal Sodomy” (yes, I still use Bing - I worked at Microsoft for ~17 years). But the description of the law was from 2006, and I wasn’t sure what it was in 1987. On some other site, I’ve found that Kansas code 21-3506 is now fully replaced by some other code (I am not a lawyer and haven’t tracked it down because it doesn’t matter).
When I saw the name of the crime, to be honest, it took my breath away. I was stunned, even though I had known that something like this was out there.
As I read the case history, I saw the word “Diversion” in it, and had to google Bing that as well. But coupled with the email from the tipster, it looked like it would likely have additional information.
That was all the relevant detail online, unless I’ve missed something.
12:53 PM (1:01 after receiving tip)
My first call to Johnson County. I spent ~4 minutes on the phone, and then I honestly forget what happened - I think the call went dead maybe?
1:02 PM (1:10 after receiving tip)
I call the second number - honestly there’s a couple missing minutes in there and I’m not sure what that’s about. This call lasts three minutes, and I ask to get details on cases K0053903 and K0033500 (which I wasn’t sure about yet). They tell me they will need to scan in those records and will let me know when that’s done.
1:34 PM (1:42 after receiving tip)
I email the tipster back, and include the following text in my response:
I just spent the last hour researching and understanding this. Johnson County courts are pulling records for me (hopefully incl. the diversion. agreement), they said I should have them tomorrow.
If the court records are able to show that this is the same Steve Morgan who currently leads The Network, I intend to move very, very quickly to publish this information - basically as soon as I can write it up in a coherent way.
Two things to note:
I noted that I could not yet confirm that these records were about the same Steve Morgan.
I stated an intention to publish “very, very quickly.”
I’m going to take a long-ish detour here to explain why I felt this way. Assuming that I could show it was the same Steve Morgan, the reason that I intended to publish quickly was:
It would show that Luke Williams and Mark Guiles had lied or badly misled the Small Group Leaders at Vista Church regarding what Andrew Lumpe had apparently been saying about Steve Morgan (remember, they said that Lumpe was saying things that “are not true”). It would show that the severing of his relationships was unjust and remains unjust today.
It provided important context for why The Network might fail to do background checks consistently or generally have proper safeguarding procedures. It’s even a close match for the original story about Alex Dieckmann seemingly failing to remove a Kids volunteer or report her after hearing her confess to having molested a child. A background check done right would have found this information about Steve Morgan, so it’s possible that him worrying what they would have found was why he did not advocate for stricter policies. That makes it incredibly relevant: it would mean that to protect his secret, he left others in danger.
In other words, as I’ve said elsewhere, they are still hurting people. If they were not, I likely would not have said anything.
Importantly, neither of those reasons is “because people should know about a 35-year old crime”. To be honest, I’ve struggled for the last year to decide whether or not I believe Steve Morgan’s alleged crime is permanently disqualifying for someone thinking of being a pastor. I believe it absolutely shows the foolishness of giving anyone as much power as The Network has given him. But the Apostle Paul persecuted the church, overseeing the killing of Christians. Isn’t there grace? I believe there is.
But that grace has to be lived out in the light. In fact, I’m not the only one who thinks so. This week, u/SmeeTheCatLady obtained a sermon from High Rock Church titled “Resolve to Use Past Failures.” It talks about how the things we’ve gotten grace for become part of our story and part of us telling about the grace of Christ. The sermon is dated March 13th, 2022, and is by Dylan Witthoft. It’s from a series titled “A Roadmap for Walking with God.”
It’s worth noting that this is about Psalm 51, and King David. Witthoft describes David’s sins as “adultery and murder”. The latter is true, but the former is inaccurate. David raped Bathsheba, as explained well by Paul Carter on The Gospel Coalition. I’ve heard other Network pastors also call it adultery, but it is not. Bathsheba had absolutely no power. David (King) sent men to “take” Bathsheba to him. In Nathan’s story confronting David in 2 Samuel 12, Nathan uses the same word “take” and makes it clear that the story he’s telling is one in which someone took an innocent thing that wasn’t his:
(Nathan speaking, I’m just quoting from verse 4 onward…) “…Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, 6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.
There’s no indication Bathsheba consented, and frankly with such extreme power dynamics, it’s not clear that consent even has a meaning here.
In the last several months, this debate has come up on Twitter repeatedly (again this past week), and frankly the only pastors who say that it was “adultery” are mostly ones who have incredibly concerning views of women. People have openly speculated as to whether they deny David’s rape of Bathsheba simply because they’ve done something similar.
Is the Network pastors inability to recognize power dynamics and “power rape” (rape in which no force is used, but the victim is subject to a strong power dynamic) a symptom of Steve Morgan being unwilling to teach such things or allow Network pastors to get educated on them? Luke Williams makes the same error repeatedly in discussing the story of Esther in sermons I will share soon.
Further, Dylan Witthoff says the following points…
In the introduction:
“After we receive forgiveness from God, after we’re reconciled back to him, what our response?”
…
“Really what that looks like is kind of taking on the work of an evangelist, you might say. It’s having God’s works, His name, what he’s done for us, continually on our lips, continually telling our story and what He’s done for us.”
Verse 13 of Psalm 51 says:
“Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Witthoft says that David repents in verses 1-12, but then turns “outward” in verse 13. Witthoft spends the front half of his sermon basically talking about how we share our story as evidence of God’s grace.
A little after the 21-minute mark, Witthoft says that David is “Just calling his sin what it is. He’s not hiding it, he’s not holding back, he’s just being straight up. Blood is on my hands.”
So, at least according to Witthoft, Morgan should have been transparent about this, specifically in order to point to the power of the grace of Christ.
Maybe you’re still not convinced, and believe it should be an option for Christians to keep this kind of thing quiet. I can maybe understand a pastor not sharing this broadly. But at the point at which some find out our sin and it may become public, we absolutely may not harm people in order to do this.
In fact, let’s parallel David and Steve Morgan for a moment.
David
David rapes Bathsheba, getting her pregnant. The pregnancy is a problem because it means her husband will know that David had raped his wife.
David then schemes to ensure the death of Bathsheba’s husband in order to prevent his sin from coming to light. (this is typically, correctly described as murder).
David gets called out by the prophet Nathan, and repents.
Steve Morgan
Allegedly sodomizes a 15-year old boy. Andrew Lumpe and his wife eventually decide to leave the church since the leaders will not deal with this in a way that Lumpe thinks is acceptable. Prior to that, James Chidester accused Lumpe of being unethical for how he’d gone about talking with his leaders about this. You may or may not agree with Lumpe that it should have been dealt with differently. But then when Lumpe was asked by people in the church why he left, he answers honestly and shares what he knows about Morgan (note that if Lumpe was lying, they could have sued him for slander for doing so).
After Lumpe’s knowledge takes on the appearance of being a threat, Luke Williams, with full agreement by the Vista Board of Overseers, recommends that all Small Group Leaders not engage with Andrew Lumpe going forward. It’s nearly impossible to believe that either Sándor Paull or Steve Morgan had not agreed that Williams should do this, but regardless, Williams is a member of the Network Leadership Team. Williams also pronounces Lumpe to be excommunicated.
In Andrew’s story, he says that, in the summer of 2021, after Lumpe told another person at Vista Church who asked him for his story, a number of people at Joshua Church dropped Andrew Lumpe within a 24-hour period, indicating that they had been told to do so by someone at Joshua Church, where Steve Morgan is the Lead Pastor.
I listened to a sermon by pastor Tim Keller about the meaning of the word translated “You fool” is in Matthew 5:21-22. Here’s the passage:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Keller says that the word translated “you fool” is actually much deeper in meaning than it appears — It’s not just a petty insult. It has the modern day equivalent of something like “you’re dead to me.” That is, the person saying it is expressing that they are going to proceed with life acting as though the other person was dead and has nothing valuable to say, as much as possible. 1 John 3:15 says it even more plainly:
“Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
So to summarize:
Sex Crime:
David: Rapes Bathsheba (frequently defended as “consensual”)
Morgan: Allegedly sodomizes a 15-year old boy (allegedly sometimes defended as having been “consensual”)
It gets found out:
David: Bathsheba gets pregnant while her husband is at war (and David’s men know they brought her to him)
Morgan: Andrew Lumpe honestly answers questions about why he left Vista Church.
Murder to hide the sin:
David: Sets up Uriah to be killed in battle.
Morgan: Either him or those around him work to sever relationships between Lumpe and those still in the church, through highly misleading statements or outright lies. (Matthew 5:21-22, 1 John 3:15)
My view was that Morgan and The Network’s behavior to shun Andrew Lumpe was and is unacceptable, and the only way I could talk about it was if I had strong evidence that Lumpe was telling the truth. I further believed that there is a strong chance that Morgan’s hidden sin has caused additional issues in The Network’s approach to abuse and safeguarding against it, and endangered many. Therefore, as soon as I had that evidence, I decided I would speak about it.
But next, we now have a diversion in David and Morgan’s stories. David confessed and repented when called out by Nathan, and was able to remain king, though there were other consequences. Morgan has not apologized in any way, choosing instead to say that those who are telling the truth are in sin. The single most egregious claim in The Network’s response is that they “We deny the allegations that have been leveled against us of spiritual abuse and of attempting to control people for our own power and gain.” All of it. They deny all of it. Dozens of allegations of hundreds of abuses across all Network Churches.
Again, let’s look at 1 John 1:5-10:
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
When you think about it, the vast majority of the Bible is telling the story of people’s sin and God’s redemption. If there was some rule around “you can’t tell the story of something God has forgiven”, you’d have to remove huge portions of the Bible, and you’d pretty much only have stories left of people who never repented, so you’d see very few examples of God’s grace.
And finally, it’s worth stating: Andrew Lumpe and I are not close. In fact, if I’m completely honest, my outburst on the reddit a couple weeks ago was in part directed at him for having continued to remain anonymous. We talk, because there’s only so many people who knew his story, and only so many I know who also speak on The Network, but we’re not best friends. I didn’t reach out to him after he left Vista in part because we’d never been particularly close (and because Luke Williams said reaching out was unnecessary and I wanted to respect Lumpe’s privacy and not pry for details). He led a different small group and we never really traveled in the same circles. I didn’t dislike him, but we weren’t and still aren’t close.
All that to say - my concern with what was done to him, his family, and their prior relationships is driven by morality, not loyalty.
2:29 PM
Back to the timeline, I was in therapy from 2-3 PM. The tipster emails me back, informing me (among other things):
I sent the letter I sent to you to "Leaving the Network" as well.
3:17 PM
After I got out of therapy and read the latest email from the tipster, I texted a contact of mine who is affiliated with Leaving the Network. Our conversation:
Me: Sounds like you got the same email I did?
LTN-Affiliate: Sounds like from whom?
Me: Initials <initials of tipster>
LTN-Affiliate: Yes, <first name and last initial of tipster>
Me: Kansas courts are pulling documents for me.
(additional texts not shared)
3:26 PM
LTN-Affiliate texts me that there will be a “zoom call with … to discuss this.” The following text states that Andrew Lumpe “may text me with some details.” I respond “Yes, pls include me on the zoom call.”
Lumpe shared me the details shortly after.
~4 PM
We met at 4 PM to discuss, during which I told parties involved that I was having the court records shared.
In the call we agreed that we needed two additional details in order to be able to speak on the story:
Corroboration that this case really was about the Steve Morgan. We hoped to get this from the court documents.
The actual text of code 21-3506 that was in effect in 1986 when the incident occurred, OR details from the court documents on what occurred. We hoped to get this from the court documents.
I spent some of the rest of the night processing what I’d found and starting to write what I would post if it was all true.
Thursday, July 7th, 2022
6:11 AM
Johnson County calls me and informs me that the court records I requested are now available.
I miss the call because 6:11 AM is not a time of day at which people should be awake (it would have been 8:11 AM in Kansas).
9:00 AM
I call Johnson County, but lines are busy.
9:02 AM
I call Johnson County again, but lines are still busy.
9:10 AM
I call Johnson County a third time and get ahold of a real person. We discuss what’s available in the case records, and I say I only need records from K0035903. They tell me that the records will not include a birth date for Steve Morgan, or a mug shot or anything else identifying. I hope they are wrong.
9:24 AM
Johnson County emails me with instructions on how to request the records and make payment ($1.89 for the records, $4.95 for processing my credit card!)
9:45 AM
I email back the completed forms, requesting the:
Complaint
Order of Diversion
Order of Dismissal
10:34 AM (22 hours and 42 minutes after receiving tip)
Johnson County emails me the documents I requested, and says they hope I have a great day. Seriously, thank you to the Johnson County Clerk’s office — y’all are the best.
10:51 AM (22 hours and 59 minutes after receiving tip)
I email the court records to LTN and Andrew Lumpe.
I also began texting my LTN contact. At 10:55 AM, they noted that the doc had Steve’s birthdate in it, and I acknowledged that I had just seen that. At 11:00 AM I noted that it had Steve Morgan’s Michigan address, adding additional corroboration, and at 11:03 AM, I noted “It has his signature” and “Which I think matches the sig on his mortgage” (referencing the mortgage documents previously shared by the Fake LTN Instagram account).
Here’s the two signatures, you can click on either to get to the source.
These two signatures were from when Steve was 23 and 44. There’s significant commonality when accounting for 21 years of repetition and signing who knows how many things as Lead Pastor since 1995. I’m not a handwriting expert, but the “S” is a particularly good match, as is the connecting loop on the “g” and the swoop on the “D”. The rest looks like it just got faster and less detailed over time (as I know my own signature has). It’s also possible that the court in 1987 required that he sign with a particularly legible version of his signature, though this is unlikely.
If the signature had been the only thing I’d had, I probably wouldn’t have published, because there’s still too much variance to be sure. But with the birth date and Michigan address, it was more than enough. I would have likely checked with people I knew who had known Steve Morgan for many years to corroborate the birth date (in fact, on my call Wednesday afternoon, those with information on the call believed Morgan’s birthdate to be in February 1964, which ended up matching). Boyne City, MI is in northern Michigan, and I knew from past conversations that Steve had lived in northern Michigan — the coincidence seemed quite unlikely.
In short, it might have taken me a bit more time/effort to confirm that this was the Steve Morgan, but I had more than enough that I’m sure I would have gotten there and without too much effort, given how many records on people are public these days.
I additionally had an ongoing thread with the tipster, though I knew that LTN was also communicating with them, so I kept my communication to a minimum just to not overwhelm them with the same questions coming from multiple sources. I continue to be grateful to the tipster for coming forward out of concern for the safety of those in The Network. That’s not an easy thing to do, and came with significant risk, but I’m glad they did it.
The rest of Thursday
I worked on my writing, and I knew LTN and Andrew Lumpe were writing, and we agreed to publish early Friday morning. Given that I knew they were publishing the main facts because of Andrew Lumpe’s long history with this event, I kept my post narrowly focused on the coverup. As LTN reported, some of the court details (location, age of victim) were new information. I know they’d previously been drafting forms of this story, but had never published it.
Friday, July 8th, 2022
6:59 AM
I get an email from Leaving the Network with the story links in it.
8:17 AM
I hit publish on my own writeup.
After
Then the rest is engagement on the reddit, I published a summary article late Saturday, etc.
What does it all mean?
Like I’ve said - to me, there are four aspects to the story here:
Steve Morgan allegedly sodomizes a child in 1986
It was hidden from most in the Network
People were allegedly harmed in order to keep it hidden
There are multiple effects in The Network that appear that they could be related to to this incident.
It’s items 3 and 4 for me that are the most important, because they are sins that continue to occur today. The Network has refused to apologize to Andrew Lumpe for excommunicating him and encouraging people to sever relationship with him. They’ve also refused to apologize to those who had a relationship with him. They appear to have lied. They appear to have hatred toward him in their heart, or what the Bible calls “murder.”
Item (1) is a huge deal, but I think a long philosophical debate could be had over whether or not it is permanently disqualifying for leadership positions. I personally believe it is, because a leader is to be “well thought of by outsiders” and at least now, the sodomy of a child is seen as about as awful a crime as someone can commit. Steve Morgan appears to have been aware of this, as does The Network, or else why keep it hidden?
If nothing else, (2) above denies people the agency to determine for themselves whether or not they want to attend a church with a leader with that in the past. I believe it also sets a poor example of living in Christ’s grace. I can only imagine how much more powerful Steve Morgan’s story would be if it was:
You know, I used to be part of the Reorganized church of Latter Day Saints. I went to one of their colleges. I served as a youth leader at one of their churches in Kansas. I was all-in on that false religion. And while I was a youth leader, to my great shame, I sodomized a 15-year old boy - a copy of the full details is available on our website and in our lobby, and we always respect those who say they cannot attend this church because of it. To this day, I mourn for the damage caused to him and his family. I can never take back what I did. I’ve done everything I can to support him. And then something strange happened - a few years later, I happened on a copy of Mere Christianity, and I read it, and the Holy Spirit did something in me. I started going to a Vineyard Church and learn about Christianity, for real this time. I confessed my crime to a leader of mine and his wife, who showed me such grace and compassion, while never once minimizing what I had done.
And by 1995, they saw fit to allow me to be a pastor. I only agreed to it on condition that the church would always know what I had done, and that someone else would be responsible for safeguarding — someone I didn’t have any power over. I also demanded that if I ever did anything even close to this, I’d be ousted as a pastor automatically. They agreed, and so I moved to start Vine Church. I also knew that this story would be central to my ministry. I knew I’d need to tell of what God had done, what he brought me out of. How my past is not better than anyone’s, and is in fact worse than most. But in Christ we are forgiven and transformed, and it’s my joy to speak about that as often as I can.
I believe that’s a powerful testimony to the grace bought with the blood of Christ, and I think the fact that Morgan does not tell that story is indicative that he does not fully live in that grace. But I also think it’s possible that the above testimony is insufficient in 2022, and that Steve Morgan would have needed to resign or at least accept a lesser position in the wake of #metoo and #churchtoo. He never should have been given the kind of power that he has, mostly because no one should have that kind of power. Power corrupts. Always.
The fact is that The Network has harmed people to hide this. And they are still doing harm - many those relationships are still severed, and Andrew Lumpe’s reputation is still being harmed) to keep this hidden is what makes this matter. And who knows what safeguarding policies might be in place if this had been in the light, and how many other abuses might have been avoided.
The documents were always public, and I would have brought attention to them the very moment I felt I had enough. Any implication that Lumpe has been sitting on this to wait for some kind of opportune moment, or is just using Steve Morgan’s confession to harm him are inaccurate. While Andrew Lumpe was able to provide a lot of rich context for the story, the fact that he’d been trusted with knowledge of this event likely only accelerated its release by a matter of hours or days - just the time I would have needed in order to verify that the documents were really the Steve Morgan.
One Last Thing
When I published my story on the events at Rock River Church, with Alex Dieckmann, which appear to show him failing to safeguard children, I did so as fast as I could. It might be tempting to read that story as laying the ground for Steve Morgan’s stuff coming out, but that’s simply not what happened. In the story about Alex Dieckmann, I similarly lay out the timeline, and show that I published it within 48 hours of failing to get any word from Texas DFPS telling me not to. Basically, as with Steve Morgan’s past, I published as fast as I could get it written well. I simply happened to find the teaching by Dieckmann in May, while the tipster contacted us on July 6th.
Closing
I hope this helps people understand how and why this went public. Andrew Lumpe was able to provide significant context, but:
The court records always were publicly available.
I would have written about them even if I’d never known what Andrew Lumpe knew about Steve Morgan.