See other Religion Articles
Title: Haggard stepping down amid gay affair inquiry
Source:
We Hold These Truths & Denver Post
URL Source: http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1029
Published: Nov 2, 2006
Author: Eric Gorski
Post Date: 2006-11-03 06:47:43 by Red Jones
Keywords: None
Views: 1210
Comments: 59
Haggard stepping down amid gay affair inquiry Denver Post Nov 02, 2006 Haggard stepping down amid gay affair inquiry By Eric Gorski Denver Post Staff Writer http://DenverPost.com Article Last Updated:11/02/2006 03:51:34 PM MST Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and founder and leader of the Colorado Springs-based New Life Church, stepped down Thursday following allegations that he has had a three-year homosexual affair with a male prostitute. Mike Jones, a self-professed male escort, talked publicly of the affair Wednesday morning on KHOW radio. Haggard denied the affair Wednesday night to KUSA Channel 9 News. But today, Haggard stated he could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations made on Denver talk radio..." After consulting with his spiritual counsel and the church's board of overseers, Haggard said, "I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity. I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date." In the interim, the church's associate senior pastor, the Rev. Ross Parsley, will serve as acting senior pastor of the church. Haggard's lawyer, Martin Nussbaum, emphasized that Haggard has not admitted to the affair. Nussbaum said the church's bylaws state that if an allegation of immorality is made, the proper action is for Haggard to step down and put himself on leave. The Colorado Springs church, with 14,000 members, is the largest New Life congregation in Colorado.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 45.
#1. To: All (#0)
I still withold judgement as to whether the accusations are true or not. I think I heard a report that Haggard himself admitted that some of the story is true. But I still don't know what to make of it.
Wonder which part is true - the having a homosexual affair, paying for the sex, or the drug use? Richard W.
Public Eye (May 26 -June 1, 2005) Pastor Ted's formula for media savvy by Cara DeGette Pastor Ted Haggard and his flock at New Life Church have been riding a surge of publicity this month. First there was the trip to Israel, where Haggard and a team of other Christian evangelicals met with Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu. Then it was off to Jerusalem for a tête-á-tête with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to talk about the relationship between evangelicals and Jews. Back in the United States, the gregarious Haggard, who heads up the National Association of Evangelicals as well as Colorado Springs New Life megachurch, was inundated with requests from the talking titans. Here was the lineup, in the words of Haggard's niece, Carolyn Haggard, as she was trying to juggle her uncle's schedule earlier this month. Friday (the 13th) · Interview with Baabaara Walters location TBA. · [Bill] O'Reilly will start taping at 5 p.m., so a car will pick you up at the ABC taping location and take you to the FOX studio. They would like you to discuss the environment and two other topics that you think are significant for the evangelical community. They are giving you a long block, so 8-12 minutes. · Also this Friday, Dateline will be here in the Springs for the Mill. Sunday (the 15th) · Dateline (NBC) will be here on Sunday. ad nauseum... Rob (producer for ABC) would LOVE it if you'd touch upon heaven during your sermon Sunday ... so, just something to think about . . . Wednesday (the 18th) · Tom Brokaw will be here at New Life Church. His schedule has changed, so he will be arriving in the Springs on Tuesday and would like to spend time with you on Wednesday ... "Now, we just need CBS (since we have FOX, NBC, and ABC), and we'll have quite the week!" Whew is right! To prepare for the onslaught, on May 10 Haggard sent to New Lifers and friends of the church the following tips on "doing a good job ... representing born-again, Bible-believing Christians." 1. If a camera is on you during a worship service, worship; don't dance, jump, etc. Secular people watching TV are touched with authentic worship, but jumping and dancing in church looks too bizarre for most to relate to. Remember, people watching TV news are not experiencing what you are experiencing. They are watching and thinking. Worship indicates sincerity, dancing and jumping looks like excessive emotionalism. 2. If reporters want to interview you, talk with them, but use words that make sense to them. Speak their language. Don't talk about the devil, demons, voices speaking to you, God giving you supernatural revelations, etc. Instead, tell your personal story in common sense language (I was a drunk but God changed me and now I'm sober, I'm grateful, etc.). 3. Don't be nervous. Be friendly and open. Reporters typically don't have an agenda, they authentically want to know what we do and why we do it. For example, Barbara Walters is working on a story about heaven and will interview me and get some supporting shots from the church ... Since we believe in heaven, we are, in fact, a good source. So, if she talks with you, don't be spooky or weird. Don't switch into a glassy-eyed heavenly mode, just answer, "Heaven is real. It's the place where God will be fully present with his people. He will reward people in heaven. Heaven is better than Colorado Springs." Say it straight and clear. Don't worry (Yeah, sure!). Come to think of it, many of Pastor Ted's guidelines could really come in handy in all sorts of encounters ... -- degette@csindy.com
LOL Richard W.
LOL- what? No rolling around on the floor "speaking in tongues"? No tamborines? No snakes or poison drinking? No guy in a wheel chair getting "healed"?
LOL. You are too cruel. Carry on.
The front page of the Huffington Post now has up a screen capture from MSNBC of Haggard meeting with Bush.
It's been reported they have weekly, every week, meetings of some sort.
Maybe he will give a couple of mil to Bush's library and get a pardon. Oh yeah, he hasn't committed a crime, just behaved like a Liberal. Guess he's stuck voting Dem from now on.
Your comments are sub-intelligent. Don't you have more self-respect than to post your tripe?
i'm giggling.
http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist-20061103288348488.html Some real gems here... {excerpt}...He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil's plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings. One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she'd been sent by a witches' coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.” Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn't come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.” He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city. ...The lights came up. Pastor Ted, now before us in the flesh, introduced a guest speaker, one of his mentors, Jack Hayford, founding pastor of the 10,000- strong Church On The Way, in Van Nuys, California. Hayford is a legend among evangelicals, one of the men responsible for the revival that made “Bible- believing” churches—what the rest of the world refers to as “fundamentalist”— safe for suburbia. He is a white-haired, balding, eagle-beaked man, a preacher of the old school, which is to say that he delivers his sermons with an actual Bible in hand (Pastor Ted uses a PalmPilot). Pastor Hayford wants to “wedge” an idea in our minds. The idea is “Order.” ...Look! said Pastor Hayford, his voice sonorous and dignified. “All wonderful, all angels.” The angels were merely different from one another. Just, he said, as we have different “ethnicities.” And just as we have, in politics, a “hierarchy.” And just as we have, in business, “different responsibilities,” employer and employees. Angels, ethnicities, hierarchy, employers and employees—each category must follow a natural order. ...“There was,” Pastor Ted said one afternoon in his office, “a significant influence exerted on the last election by Colorado Springs.” He was meeting with me and another reporter, an Australian from a financial paper. “You mean,” the Australian asked, “almost like a force going out from Colorado Springs?” A force—Pastor Ted liked that. He smiled and offered other examples. His favorite was the Ukraine, where, he claimed, a sister church to New Life had led the protests that helped sweep the pro-Western candidate into power. ...Which brings us back to “Order.” Key to the growth of evangelicalism during the last that allows churches to grow endlessly while maintaining orthodoxy in their ranks. New Life, for instance, has 1,300 cell groups, or “small groups,” as Pastor Ted prefers to call them. Such a structure is not native to Colorado Springs; in fact, most evangelicals attribute it to Pastor Paul Cho, of South Korea, who has built a congregation of 750,000 using the cell-group structure. American megachurches that have adopted the cell model unaltered have had only partial success. ...Free-market economics is a “truth” Ted says he learned in his first job in professional Christendom, as a Bible smuggler in Eastern Europe. ...But Pastor Ted's true genius lies in his organizational hierarchy, which ensures ideological rigidity even as it allows for individual expression. Not just anyone can lead a small group, much less a section; a battery of personality and spiritual tests must be undergone first, as well as an official background check. Once chosen, group leaders meet regularly with their own leaders in the chain of command, and members are encouraged to jump the chain and speak to a higher level if they think their leader is straying into “false teachings”—moral relativism, ecumenism, or even “Satanism,” in the form of New Age notions such as crystal healing. ...Royal Rangers, a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts. The largest “outpost” of the Rangers in the country, 475 boys and men, rallies at New Life. Royal Rangers wear khaki military uniforms and black ties. They study rope craft and smallbore shooting and “American Cultures.” There is a badge for “Atomic Energy,” which boys can earn by making scale models of a nuclear reactor. Mainly, though, Rangers earn merit badges for reading the Bible. -Soldiers of Christ Inside America's most powerful megachurch with Pastor Ted Haggard Thursday, November 2, 2006. Originally from May 2005. By Jeff Sharlet.
#46. To: angle (#45)
gack
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#2. To: Red Jones (#1)
I think I heard a report that Haggard himself admitted that some of the story is true.
#7. To: Arete (#2)
http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2005-05-26/publiceye.html
#8. To: angle (#7)
don't be spooky or weird
#9. To: Arete (#8)
If a camera is on you during a worship service, worship; don't dance, jump, etc.
#25. To: Burkeman1 (#9)
No rolling around on the floor "speaking in tongues"? No tamborines? No snakes or poison drinking? No guy in a wheel chair getting "healed"?
#26. To: leveller (#25)
#31. To: aristeides (#26)
Quite the happy couple.
#32. To: angle (#31)
#42. To: It Is A Republic (#32)
#43. To: angle (#42)
#45. To: christine (#43)
Much more at:
Replies to Comment # 45. He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 45.