The truth, or perhaps more of the truth, has come out about Ted Haggard.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- Less than 24 hours after being fired from the mega-church he founded, evangelical Pastor Ted Haggard confessed to a "lifelong" sexual problem.
In a letter read to members of his New Life Church Sunday, Haggard said he is "a deceiver and a liar." Haggard apologized to his congregation in the letter and asked for their forgiveness.
"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard said in the letter read by Pastor Larry Stockstill, a member of the board of overseers of New Life Church. On Saturday, members of the board ousted Haggard from the 14,000-member church, citing his "sexually immoral conduct. story
Ted got up in front of the whole congregaion and wept and confessed. His wife has said she will stick by him.
Having observed these situations up close before, when a Pastor committs adultery, the only way for real healing for both the leader and the congregation, is for all the dirty stuff to be confessed to, be frank and honest about.
Men, men, men. The Valiant Man course we are doing at Bedford is so relevant to how I am feeling at the moment. Men have to be honest about the struggles they are going through, even if that struggle is one with homosexuality, sexual addiction, or something else which is embarassing and 'hidden'.
I don't want to lose any of my mates in the ministry to this sort of thing, nor do I want any of the blokes in my church to succumb to this, or be crippled but it.
We have got to get better at doing life together.
Posts
Where Was Jesus?
-
This week I attended a ‘Solace’ service at Riverview church, where Ellie
attends, a reflective space to acknowledge that for some of us Christmas
will be a...
4 days ago
3 comments:
11:12 am
I wish I could recall the blog site I was on earlier today - but the poster made a comment that is so very true... at issue was the idea that we in ministry and even we as believers seem to be up against a brick wall when it comes to living transparent lives - why? Because all of us seem so eager to use that info AGAINST one another... this poster's comment was that, perhaps, Haggard had been living and operaiting within a system that does not truly allow for honest tranparency - which means things get hiddens, stuffed and repressed. Eventually, all that stuff needs to come out one way or another.
The message here for we who call ourselves followers of Christ is to learn how to LOVE and ACCEPT each other without being so trigger happy to hammer each other when "bad news" or "confessions of sin" are offered. Is that possible? I don't know. I pray it is, but my fears and experience tell me otherwise.
11:40 am
It's such a sad thing. To see another pastor fall down is too much. It's happening too often and you're right about needing to do something about it Mark.
I remember Barry Ryall saying a few years ago that he was sick of picking people up after they've fallen off the cliff, he wanted to build better fences.
Check out http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/11/the_haggard_tru.html for a gret article from Gordon MacDonald about it all.
This is one quote talking about his own moral failure.
"I’ve spent more than a little time trying to understand how and why some men/women in all kinds of leadership get themselves into trouble whether the issues be moral, financial, or the abuse of power and ego. I am no stranger to failure and public humiliation. From those terrible moments of twenty years ago in my own life I have come to believe that there is a deeper person in many of us who is not unlike an assassin."
9:09 pm
wow, convicting comment from Barry
Post a Comment