Ted Haggard, the former megachurch pastor and former National Association of Evangelicals chief whose career was undone by a sex and drugs scandal in 2006, will appear in a cable TV special this month.
Former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard said Wednesday that he will launch a new church from his Colorado Springs home, 3 1/2 years after he resigned from his ministry amid an embarrassing and devastating sex scandal.
Haggard said he doesn’t know how many people will attend his new church, but he said the ordeal he and his wife, Gayle, went through has prepared them to help others.
According to the terms of an agreement he signed with his former church, Ted Haggard was not only banished from New Life but also — in a provision more typical of TV westerns and medieval decrees — forbidden from ever returning to the state of Colorado. As chronicled in The Trials of Ted Haggard, an HBO documentary that aired last January, the Haggards moved through a series of temporary lodgings as the pastor-turned-insurance-salesman roamed Phoenix neighborhoods, growing to resemble the Willy Loman character in Death of a Salesman.
So virtually no one expected to find Haggard and his family back in their comfortable Colorado Springs home, less than a mile from the mega-church that started nearly 25 years ago as a basement gathering of worshippers. Gayle, Ted’s wife for the last 30 years, has written a book called Why I Stayed, which is slated for January release by Christian publisher Tyndale House. Ted, meanwhile, has begun speaking at churches around the country and recently posted to the Internet that he’s “motivated for the first time in 2.5 years to re-enter full-time ministry.”
Ted Haggard came to Irving, Texas on Sunday to apologize for the scandal that ended his evangelical ministry in Colorado almost three years ago, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Since March, Haggard and his wife have appeared at dozens of churches around the country talking in general terms about his “sin” and her decision to forgive him.
“I can’t go into a lot of detail here,” Gayle Haggard said Sunday. She is writing a book about her ordeal titled Why I Stayed, which will be released in January.
In this editon of RNB Roundup: Scientology: death by devotion • Ted Haggard: Can a fallen pastor ever redeem himself? • Are Christians stingy? • Haunted hospital calls in exorcist • The National Religious Campaign Against Torture says its work is not over • Preacher Sues Bill Maher.
Plus: God may not care who wins, but players in Super Bowl care a lot about God • More…
Ted Haggard, the powerful U.S. evangelist who fell from grace in 2006 amid a gay sex scandal, returned to the spotlight Friday saying his faith was stronger but he wished people had been more forgiving.
An HBO documentary about Haggard’s year in exile, his struggle with his sexuality in the face of his past condemnation of gays, and his attempts to make a living outside the church, will air on the cable TV network on January 29.
In an HBO documentary set to air Jan. 29, disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard says he never claimed to be heterosexual, as was once reported, and he continues to struggle with same-sex attraction.
But he’s committed to living a heterosexual life because he believes it’s better for children to be raised by a mother and a father.
Ted Haggard may have revealed during recent sermons at an Illinois church that he was sexually abused as a child, but he’s not revealing whether his appearance hints at a desire to return to the pulpit permanently.
Several church leaders with ties to the disgraced founder of New Life Church, however, have a piece of advice: Don’t do it – at least not yet.
Ted Haggard, the evangelist forced out of his job after being caught up in a sex scandal involving a male prostitute, has left a “spiritual restoration program” and no longer has any ties to the megachurch he founded, the congregation’s new pastor said Sunday.