FORT WORTH, Texas — Southlake’s Gateway Church is reeling from the shocking child sex abuse allegations against its founder Robert Morris, prompting questions of how one of the country’s largest churches will weather the scandal.

Morris resigned from the church last week after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

Gateway Church has seen protests and even more allegations of sex abuse after Cindy Clemishire spoke out about the alleged abuse, which she said occurred when she was between 12 and 16.

The Southlake-based megachurch held its inaugural service at the Hilton Hotel in Grapevine in April 2000 and moved to Southlake in 2003. It moved into its 64-acre campus there in 2010 and went on to become the ninth largest church in the country, according to Outreach magazine. Its auditorium was around half-full for the first Sunday service since Morris resigned.

Only time will tell if Gateway will survive the scandal. It depends on how much of its congregation it can hold onto, according to religion experts and activists with experience with church sex abuse scandals. Gateway says on its website that over 100,000 people attend services at its 10 campuses each weekend.

“If it affects membership, if it affects donations, then even the largest churches can fall,” said Warren Throckmorton, a former psychology professor at Grove City College, a Christian university in the Pennsylvania town of the same name. Throckmorton writes a blog and books about church and religious issues.

Throckmorton wrote extensively on the collapse of Seattle-based Mars Hills Church in 2014 after pastor Mark Driscoll faced multiple allegations of verbally abusive and coercive behavior toward elders and church staff.

“I think there’s a very real potential that can happen with Gateway, because the public just lost confidence in Morris,” he said. “If Mars Hill Church can go down based on Mark Driscolls’ behavior, then how much more should Gateway follow suit? But it is big. It’s a bigger organization, bigger business than Mars Hill.”

Were Gateway to fail, it would not be the first in North Texas to dissolve as a result of a sex scandal. Harvest Church in Watauga lost over a third of its congregation after pastor Ollin Collins was accused of sexual misconduct in 1998. Membership rebounded slightly after a change in leadership, but the church is no longer functioning today.

Others watching the Gateway scandal aren’t as inclined to believe that Clemishire’s allegations have turned off enough of Morris’ flock to bring about the church’s demise.

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