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Ted Haggard Faces More Gay Sex Accusations

By ERIC GORSKI, Associated Press, here, 23rd January 2009

“DENVER (AP) — Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard — a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

{endtimes note – why are we only hearing details about this NOW?]

Boyd said an “overwhelming pool of evidence” pointed to an “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” that “went on for a long period of time … it wasn’t a one-time act.” Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.

Reached Friday night, Haggard declined to comment and said all interviews would have to be arranged through a publicist for HBO, which is airing a documentary about him this month.

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

{How righteous or biblical is this to pay someone off with hush money? How biblical is it to conceal such things concerning the sins of leaders?]

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man’s decision to go public.

The disclosure comes as Haggard, 52, is about to give a series of high-profile interviews to promote the cable documentary about his time in exile. He is scheduled to appear on CNN’s Larry King Live on Thursday, the date of the documentary’s premiere, and already has taped “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

In early 2007, New Life Church disclosed that an investigation uncovered new evidence that Haggard engaged in “sordid conversation” and “improper relationships” — but didn’t go into detail. Earlier, a church board member had said there was no evidence that Haggard had sexual relations with anyone but Mike Jones, the former male prostitute.

Haggard confessed to undisclosed “sexual immorality” after Jones’ allegations and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and from New Life Church, where he faced being fired.

Anticipating criticism of the settlement with the former church volunteer, Boyd said Friday that it was in the best interests of all involved.

{Yeah right – THEIR best interests. Typical high handedness, hypocrisy and cover-up! And lack of true humility, honesty and accountability.]

He would not name the volunteer or the settlement amount.

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said.

{So why have the gag clause? Why pay him anything at all – to what end? Does the church normally pay for its every-day congregants to get counselling or to get through college?!]

 ”Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance — certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

{What “compassionate assistance” do they give others who lead clean lives? Or does one have to sleep with the pastor to get their bills paid through this compassionate assistance?]

He said that “secondarily, it’s not great for our church either” that the story be told. Boyd said Haggard knew about the settlement two years ago.

In a letter e-mailed Friday to New Life Church members, Boyd said of the settlement and agreement not to talk: “This decision was made not as an attempt to conceal wrongdoings, but to protect him from those who would seek to exploit him. His actions now suggest that he has changed his mind.”

{If he told the truth and repented of his deeds, he would have no skeletons to hide and not need to fear such exploitation of him by threatening such revelations.]

The letter said the church “received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior” after Haggard’s fall. “In each case, we have tried our very best to do the right thing each time, including disciplinary action when appropriate.”

{The right thing to do? How much was Haggard’s gag clause again?]

Boyd said the “inappropriate behavior” referred to the man who was the volunteer involved with Haggard. After Haggard’s fall, another church staff member resigned after admitting to what was described as “sexual misconduct.”

Boyd said the church will not take action against the man if he tells his story in the press.

“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to,” he said.

{So it is a gag clause! It was hush money!]

Boyd said he had spoken to the man once and came away with the impression that he was speaking out because of the documentary. “I think what caused this young man to be a bit aggravated was Ted being seen as a victim, when he himself had experienced a great deal of hurt,” Boyd said. “I seriously doubt this man would have come forward if the documentary had not been made.”

A spokeswoman for the documentary, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” declined to comment Friday.

David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — which has largely focused on the Catholic sexual abuse scandal but also speaks out on cases involving Protestant clergy — said the new disclosures about Haggard are more disturbing because they involves a church volunteer.

“Technically, legally, they were both adults,” Clohessy said. “Psychologically and emotionally, Haggard was dramatically more powerful. … By definition, any sexual contact between a congregant and minister is inherently abusive and manipulative.”

In an AP interview this month before an appearance in front of TV critics in California, Haggard described his sexuality as complex and something that can’t be put into “stereotypical boxes.”

___________________

See also Ted Haggard claims New Life Church Told Him to Go to Hell

___________________

January 24, 2009 - Posted by endtimespropheticwords | Abusive Churches - Spiritual Abuse, Brady Boyd, False Prophets and Teachers, National Association of Evangelicals, New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), News, Ted Haggard | , | 17 Comments

17 Comments »

  1. As seen by John Arnott and Steve Long and Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship suing Walter Kambulow for $ 50 million dollars, these Third Wave hypocrites will go at any length to stop being exposed including paying hush money

    http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/karl-strader-and-gordon-williams-on-lakeland-outpouring/

    From: Gordon Williams
    Sent: August 8, 2008
    To: Karl Strader
    Subject: RE: report

    For your information, I just recently met Walter Kambulow. If you had been reading my material for the last 15 years since we, in our ministry. have been dealing with this kind of false ministry, you would know that he did not influence me but it is the other way around. I have influenced him in the very short time I have known him which is less than one year. You people who disregard the Bible and cannot tell the difference between the work of the Holy Spirit are always looking for excuses not to be responsible. Several years ago, after visiting the Toronto Airport Ministry, and observing hundreds of people possessed with demons which they received, I wrote that what was going on there and now in Lakeland was a reverse blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in which people like you are misidentifying the work of demons for the work of the Holy Spirit. I tried to talk to John Arnott whom I have known for many years about the fact that people were being possessed in his meetings. He simply said, “If they have demons, they had them before they came to our meetings.” If you take the time to read what I have written to you, you might learn something that you need to know. It is sad when people, like yourself, are unteachable. And, as I have already explained to you, it is pastors and people, like myself, have to clean up the spiritual carnage that you have participated in. We have already been setting many people free from this demonic “new anointing” and who now have the responsibility of casting demons out of who knows how many victimized people who thought that they were going to a safe Christian meeting and who received demons as the result of people who have been blinded by the devil and who has your tickled your ears. I have spoken with a pastor from Jacksonville FL who has told me that up to date he has had to cast demons out of 40 people who received them in your Lakeland meetings. I will not let people like you try to blame my ministry and the guidance of the Holy Spirit and knowledge of the Scriptures that I have on somebody else who has been trying to show you the seriousness of your own sin. Did you read my letter? I at least showed you the courtesy of reading yours.

    Yours in Jesus Christ, Gordon

    ________________________________________
    From: Karl Strader [mailto:kstrader@cfaith.com]
    Sent: August 8, 2008 12:36 PM
    To: ‘Gordon Williams’
    Subject: RE: report

    I immediately saw Walter Kambulow’s name for reference. You evidently have let him influence you!

    Comment by walter | January 24, 2009

  2. Next Thursday? Or have I already missed the Larry King interview.

    Larry King is hard to come up against! Check this in-depth news report on the Stress NASA Astronauts have to go through while on air with Larry King.

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_hkA2jWQs

    The Gay Preacher won’t last!

    Comment by Avshalom | January 24, 2009

  3. I’ve got the ANSWER. Why don’t all the deceiving ministries and clergy get together and start up their own channel, like: ‘Deception Today’ where each ministry or clergyman/woman show what is happening in the soap opera format. Sponsors like (cleaning products and viagra) would foot the bill. It would be a gold mine of entertainment and endless possibilities. Perhaps people would then see these people for what they really are ‘ACTORS’.

    Comment by Canadanorth | January 25, 2009

  4. >> Why don’t all the deceiving ministries and clergy get together and start up their own channel

    They have loads already. One is called God TV. Another TBN …

    Comment by endtimespropheticwords | January 25, 2009

  5. Yes, too much sexual sin within the walls of the church..this makes the Lord so sad..defiles the church in allowing this kind of sexual sin to go on.

    Comment by Lela | January 25, 2009

  6. The great deception is telling a Christian from a christian.

    Comment by Canadanorth | January 25, 2009

  7. It’s going to get uglier.

    TV station KRDO in Colorado Springs is going to run a story tonight (Monday) about this and has been teasing it all weekend. One of the revelations to come out about all this is that, according to the volunteer, some of the activity was “non-consensual.”

    http://www.krdo.com/Global/story.asp?S=9725700

    And Mike Jones, the guy who originally exposed Ted Haggard, is very upset, particularly at New Life Church. Jones’ beef? NLC said that he (Jones) was the only one and now it turns out that’s not the case. Jones wants an apology from NLC. (Hell will freeze over first, IMHO.)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vapt8xp1IhA

    A documentary on Ted Haggard’s fall from grace is premiering on HBO on Thursday night. He’s also going to be on Larry King then. If he shows up.

    Comment by mirele | January 26, 2009

  8. It was inevitable really …

    A long running relationship between the Pastor and a young naive person who got manipulated.

    How many more times will we read that kind of thing?

    Very sad. The incredible thing is that Ted had to go to a male prostitute as well. Needing three different partners … including his wife. What must she be going through with that guy?

    Well … I am praying for her.

    Shalom.

    Comment by Bull | January 26, 2009

  9. Oh wow, Mike Jones has a book out?!!!!!!!!

    Comment by endtimespropheticwords | January 26, 2009

  10. Trial By Fury
    Scandal Sentenced Ted Haggard to a New Life
    By Karl Vick
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Sunday, January 25, 2009; M01
    UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. Two years ago Ted Haggard vanished into the gap that separates righteous, evangelical America from righteous, liberal America. By chance this cultural divide was defined to a large extent by attitudes about gay sex even before a male prostitute announced he had been sleeping with the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and had sold him some methamphetamine.
    Now Haggard, 52, is back in the public eye, his lanky frame leaning forward on an easy chair in a penthouse suite of the Universal City Hilton as he flogs “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi that debuts on HBO Thursday. The striking woman on the couch to his right is his wife, Gayle, still with the pastor despite everything — the scandal, their exile to the desert, and the continuing mystery of her husband’s sexuality — because she found in the teachings of Jesus the grace to forgive, vs. the “downward spiral” of judgment and hate.
    Haggard came to the same place by an alternate route.
    “My spiritual life was wonderfully empowering for me in the midst of the struggle. But it wasn’t the solution,” he says.
    “I needed a therapist.”
    Decades in the ministry failed to prepare him for this.
    “I thought, ‘I don’t need to go to a therapist!’ I mean I didn’t even understand therapy. ‘Jesus is the solution to everything!’ ” he says. “And I personally believe now that this process has occurred so that I would get the therapy I needed. I believe my therapy is the answer to 30 years of prayer about this subject. And so I am very grateful for the decision of the overseers and the restorers and I’m so thrilled about the way my life is now. I’m the man now that — no, no, no, that’s not true. I am becoming the man now that everybody thought I was then.”
    The “overseers” ran the 14,000 member New Life Church that Haggard founded in 1984 in Colorado Springs, Colo., the city and state the Haggards were required to leave as a condition of a $100,000-plus severance package hammered out with the church in the global glare of scandal. He went to Arizona for secular counseling because the supervising clerics required — who’d have seen this coming, after the shunning? — that he get therapy.
    The family will be on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” Wednesday to talk about it.
    They wandered in the wilderness for more than a year. For the first four months the family lived in a spacious suburban manse lent by a friend. When the Haggards and their U-Haul moved on, as they always did, it was to steadily less capacious quarters. The final scene of the documentary finds the pastor hiking into the sagebrush behind a cramped short-term rental, searching for the peace and quiet to read the Bible that he still clutches. But a secular book also lent him strength.
    “Up until the book ‘The Speed of Trust,’ I so deeply wanted to be a man that thoroughly reflected Scripture, I just buried the struggle in my heart,” Haggard says, referring to the self-help book on building relationships. “And it was ‘The Speed of Trust’ that set me free in that.” He says he finished reading it the Monday after a public confession of his wrongdoings was read aloud in the arena nave of New Life just after the scandal broke in November 2006. He turned to Gayle and said: “I’m going to tell you everything that’s been going on inside of me. Because I’ve been going through hell.”
    Two years later, everyone seems comfortable with everyone else, including the two of their five kids taking part in the publicity tour for a film about Dad’s sex life.
    “Yeah, no kiddin’,” says Marcus Haggard, 25. “Spare the details, certainly.”
    Details are what people want, of course. You get only some. To avoid further mortification, the pastor says he talks only to Gayle and his therapist about the homosexual activity that occurred between his born-again experience at age 16 and the dramatic emergence of Mike Jones, a masseur and escort who described sexual encounters with the pastor, exposing his double life.
    Haggard will say his first sexual encounter ever occurred in second grade, with a man who worked for his father, an Indiana veterinarian and founder of a charismatic ministry.
    “But I don’t blame that for my behavior,” he says of the encounter. “A therapist would have to say whether that’s relevant or not. I am just saying that that happened. I know the thoughts associated with it are relevant, but I don’t know if that’s compelling or not.
    “Then there was a little bit of sex play with seventh-grade buddies. Then I became a Christian at 16, when I was told that everything pre-repentance is washed away, is gone, you never have to think about it again, you’re born again.”
    In his new, saved life, lines between the permitted and forbidden grew perhaps unnaturally bright. Many of the evangelicals around him saw virtue in absolutes. In college Haggard owned an eight-track tape of B.J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” and his girlfriend dropped him “because that was so worldly.”
    Of sex with men, Haggard won’t specify when in his adult life the encounters began, and with how many people he shared those encounters. He does say that “when anything would come to my mind I would try to dismiss it, when I should have in fact processed it. That’s what I learned in the last two years. And it was major error for me. And that isolated it, and according to some of my therapists that’s what created some of my problem as an adult, and that’s what I’ve been able to work through.”
    Before he worked it through, however, Haggard toed the evangelical line on gay sex. He supported Amendment 2, a Colorado referendum nullifying civil protections for gays and lesbians (passed, but later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court). He advised youngsters to look to the Scripture that describes homosexuality as an abomination.
    Meanwhile, his own secret behavior proved a source of incessant torment.
    “There were a few times when I talked to other people about it, but they were always within the religious leadership community, and they always gave me bad advice,” Haggard says, with what only sounds like a laugh. “I talked to one old man of God, told him about it, and he said, ‘You just need to be busier in the church.’
    “And talked to another about it, and he said, ‘Have you memorized Romans 6?’ ”
    The one that ends: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
    Haggard offers “the incongruity of my life” as evidence of the limits of belief in absolutes.
    “I would say I am a heterosexual,” he begins, when asked his sexual preference. “But I have had to deal with issues, other issues associated with sexuality, and with the complexity of homosexuality and bisexuality and questions and feelings and thoughts and all that kind of thing.
    “But what was so incredibly confusing to me about it was the way I enjoyed my relationship with my wife.”
    Gayle nods. She says one of the things that confused her was how well their marriage had been going when the scandal broke.
    “I think it was because I was fighting for it,” Haggard says. “See, I had that other thing going on, and I was going back, it was a love-hate thing going on with my sin.
    “And I call it my sin,” he says. “That’s my sin. I’m not saying everybody is a sinner that does it. I’m just saying with my standards and my values, it was a sin against me and God. For me.”
    Gayle gives it a moment, then shoots him a look and points to herself.
    “And me,” she says.
    When Jones went public with his accusations, he told reporters he knew Haggard as “Art,” his middle name. He said they met monthly over the course of three years, always for sex. Jones said Haggard used meth to enhance sex, an accusation that Haggard — when asked — confirms with a hurried nod.
    “There was a drug piece,” he says, then describes himself as a novice in “that whole world.” He says a blood test taken when he arrived for counseling showed the drugs had already flushed from his system.
    None of this might have come to light, however, but for Haggard’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Jones has said he went public only after learning Haggard’s full identity and politics.
    Those politics appear to have grown more nuanced.
    “Prior to this scandal, I felt as though the definition of marriage was an important issue to be reflected in law,” Haggard said. “I now believe that the Gospel is so wonderful, that the New Testament is so wonderful, the grace of God is so wonderful that that word might not be so significant that it should define publicly evangelicalism.”
    As Haggard explains his change of heart, hawks careen on thermals over the Hollywood Hills behind him. It wasn’t only what was happening inside him in recent years that provoked this change, he says. It was also what others said about him.
    “I don’t think I’d ever experienced hate before.”
    And he got it from both sides, a situation that put Haggard “in a unique position to carry on a discussion about that whole issue, and bring some light of reason to it” says Greg Walta, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who left New Life Church over Amendment 2, but credits Haggard for supporting a later effort at compromise. “It’s kind of high time for that anyway.”
    Haggard said the hatred directed his way arrived with equal force from across the cultural spectrum.
    “The difference is that when it comes from church people who promote love, forgiveness, understanding and grace, it penetrates one more deeply,” he said.
    “Although, on the homosexual political side, their theme is tolerance, diversity, hope, ‘no judgment!’ ” Haggard points out. He settles back in the chair. “So I guess it’s pretty equal then.”
    Not to Pelosi. The daughter of the House speaker fashioned “The Trials” as the latest in a series of low-tech, videotaped documentaries that began on the 2000 campaign trail with “Journeys With George,” and brought her into contact with Haggard for last year’s “Friends of God,” about evangelicals.
    Pelosi’s next project, “Right America: Feeling Wronged,” scheduled to air on HBO in February, gives voice to the hard-core Republicans who showed up most faithfully at John McCain rallies. Their anger is rooted in feeling ignored, a resentment that appears justified to Pelosi, who in discussing the overlooked population exhibits the enthusiasm of Leni Riefenstahl after coming upon the Nuba.
    “We liberals are so intolerant of anybody who doesn’t share our worldview,” Pelosi said.
    Pelosi found Haggard early in his exile in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was living around the corner from her sister. She offered to help him move, showed up with a camera and came back routinely. Her husband, Michiel Vos, helped out, filming Haggard as he compared himself to hapless George Costanza on the way to a job interview (“If they don’t Google me, I’ll get the job”), as he hung fliers on doorknobs, and as he peddled health insurance to strangers. Near his nadir, Haggard awakens wreathed in the nubby brown blanket of a Super 8. He pulls a Treo close to his face, reads Scripture aloud, lays his head on the pillow, and, reflecting on his sexuality, announces that his therapy has made him “healthy enough I can make a choice about those types of things.”
    “The first thing I asked the head psychologist was, just, ‘Can you tell me that my husband is who I believe he is?’ ” Gayle says. “Because I believe he’s still that man. I believe that our marriage is real, all that we have gone through and grown through is real, that our family is real, that the church that he planted and that we’ve grown up over the last 22 years is real.”
    She continues, “So this whole idea of sexuality being complex: I can see that it is so wrong of us to compartmentalize us and to label people. I am hoping that through all of this we’ll learn how to, instead of label people and put them in categories, that we’ll learn to really listen to each other and really see each other and have compassion for each other. Because the last thing we need to do is burden people who are just trying to work out their lives.”
    A few years ago, that view would have gotten nowhere in the evangelical community, says Wendy Murray Zoba, author of “The Beliefnet Guide to Evangelical Christianity.” Now, though, there may be a bit more room in that world.
    “The movement is maturing, and there is a very solid and grounded segment that would rally around that statement,” says Zoba, whose latest book is on Saint Francis of Assisi, who was a playboy before becoming a saint. “Many others wouldn’t. They’d say you’d have to draw the line somewhere. They’d use the word ’sin.’ . . . Ted Haggard is a test case. He’s a very defining example of the complications that are challenging evangelicals.”
    They are all selling life insurance now: Ted, Gayle and daughter Christy. Life sells far faster than health, he says, because it’s easier to tell if someone is alive than to tell what’s going on inside.
    The overseers let them return to Colorado last year. Haggard doesn’t go to church these days; he prays at home. He says he probably carries too much baggage to ever return to the pulpit full time, but last Sunday morning he did wake up in his own bed. He said could hear his children moving around the house, some preparing for church, others for a party that night.
    “I just laid there and listened to the noises in the house,” he says, “and was just so grateful I wasn’t waking up in a little garage apartment by myself.”
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012300879.html

    Comment by susan | January 26, 2009

  11. Mike Jones says in the video that he knew there were other men that Haggard had had sex with that he could not publicly ‘out’, they had to do it themselves – he says they were scared. Some of their parents knew and wanted to turn a blind eye. Says he tried to contact Brady Boyd when he took over New Life because of the other young men who were coming to him and Pastor Boyd refused to meet with him. Mike says if he had not said something it would still be going on, probably even worse.

    Mike Jones claims he is deeply hurt and angry about the hypocrisy and cover-up, especially when New Life knew that Mike was not alone, and Mike has had to take the heat these past few years and be painted in a bad light.

    Comment by endtimespropheticwords | January 26, 2009

  12. Ted couldn’t stick at an average man’s job so pimping himself, the wife and kids will put him back in the BIG TIME. His kids do not look happy in the photo I saw and some day they are gonna be real mad. Dad cashing in on his sex life, this amounts to passive sexual abuse for the family. Think about if this was your dad!!

    Comment by Canadanorth | January 26, 2009

  13. Comment by Brad moved by admin

    New Life tried to avoid latest Haggard sex scandal – the church knew about the allegations and gave cash to the man which can be considered as hush money

    New Life tried to avoid latest Haggard sex scandal
    MARK BARNA
    January 24, 2009 – 2:20PM
    New Life Church tried to head off the fallout that has embroiled the congregation in its second sex scandal involving Ted Haggard, the Rev. Brady Boyd said Saturday.

    Boyd asked the church’s disgraced former pastor in December to postpone the release of the HBO documentary “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” saying that it could motivate a second man to go public with sexual allegations against him.

    Three weeks ago, Boyd told the New Life volunteer not to go public about his relationship with Haggard, which occurred before the evangelical leader was fired from the church in November 2006.

    Instead, the documentary will premiere Thursday on HBO, and the young man is scheduled speak about his relationship on Monday.

    “The first thing I am so sorry about is that this wound, that was almost healed, has been reopened,” Boyd said. “I will have to go back to the beginning with a lot of people in our church and take them through the process of healing.”

    As for Haggard, Boyd is dumbfounded.

    “We are making progress, but it seems with him it’s one step forward and two steps back,” Boyd said. “This is my biggest burden ever.”

    In a wide-ranging interview on Saturday, Boyd also explained why the church gave money to the man who made the most recent sex allegations against Haggard. Boyd also discussed why New Life will survive this latest scandal, and what he plans to preach about today in the wake of the fallout.

    “Let’s separate New Life’s reputation from Ted Haggard’s reputation,” Boyd said. “Ted is not affiliated with New Life. These recent allegations are on his plate. Not ours.”

    The latest Haggard scandal began Thursday when Boyd was notified by a Colorado Springs TV station that a church volunteer was going public with allegations against Haggard. On Friday, Boyd sent out an e-mail to inform thousands of New Life members that the church knew about the allegations and gave cash to the man, whom the church won’t name because of confidentiality rules observed by preachers.

    Boyd also said in the e-mail that over the past two years several others at the church have come forward to report “inappropriate behavior” by Haggard prior to his firing for sex with a gay Denver prostitute.

    Boyd didn’t elaborate Saturday on whether the accusations from those people included sex, or if the relationship with the young volunteer was consensual.

    Shortly after Haggard was fired from New Life, church officials learned of the allegations from the volunteer, who was in his early 20s at the time of the relationship.

    The man got months of counseling. Then in December 2007, he received the first of several payments for his tuition and board at a Chicago college and other money for continued counseling, Boyd said. The cash came with a confidentiality agreement that barred all parties from talking about the relationship.

    “We offer confidentiality to the people we counsel,” Boyd said. “The pastor-laity privilege is on par with the attorney-client relationship.”

    As for the money, Boyd said, “It was not a payoff. It was compassionate assistance.”

    The man decided to go public because of Haggard’s documentary, Boyd said. In the film, Haggard at times rails against New Life for not forgiving him.

    “The documentary incited this man,” Boyd said. “When a victim feels that the person who violated him is not sorry for it, they lash out.

    “It is very, very common. If Ted had not chosen to do the documentary, he would not have come forward.”

    Over the past two months, Boyd has met with Haggard twice at the disgraced pastor’s Colorado Springs home. Both characterized the meetings as positive. Besides praying together and talking about New Life, Boyd and Haggard discussed the upcoming documentary.

    At their first meeting in early December, Boyd asked Haggard to postpone the film’s release because it might cause someone to go public with sexual allegations against him.

    “Let’s wait until the whole chapter is written,” Boyd told Haggard.

    Though HBO contends that Haggard was not paid to be in the documentary, Boyd said Haggard confirmed that he is being paid to promote it. Since Jan. 9, Haggard has given dozens of media interviews; on Thursday he is scheduled to appear on “Larry King Live.”

    Haggard could not be reached Saturday for comment.

    Despite the trouble at New Life, Boyd was confident the church will rebound.

    He pointed to the congregation’s strength in weathering a the first Haggard scandal and the horrific Dec. 9, 2007, shooting that took the lives of two teenaged members.

    Membership is up to 10,000 after dipping to 8,800 following Haggard’s dismissal, and donations were up 9.5 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, church records show.

    “This is one of the most compassionate, forgiving groups of people I have ever met,” Boyd said of his congregation. “We will walk it out together.”

    Boyd’s sermon today was prepared five weeks ago, but he said it is fitting given the circumstances.

    After a talking about and praying for Haggard, Boyd will preach about forgiveness.

    “This is no accident,” Boyd said.
    http://www.gazette.com/news/haggard_46844___article.html/boyd_life.html

    CHECK OUT NEW LIFE’S CONNECTION WITH TEDD HAGGARD AND PETER WAGNER OF THE IMPLICATIONS & IMPACT OF THE NEW & FALSE THEOLOGY OF PETER WAGNER IN EVANGELICAL CIRCLES AND THE SO-CALLED “NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION”

    http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/PDFDIR/Peter%20Wagner%20and%20his%20New%20Apostolic%20Reformation.pdf

    Comment by endtimespropheticwords | January 26, 2009

  14. http://www.krdo.com/Global/story.asp?S=9725700

    Upcoming NEWSCHANNEL 13 Investigation Reveals New Life Church Scandal
    By Tak Landrock

    COLORADO SPRINGS – New accusations surface against former New Life Pastor, Ted Haggard, after a NEWSCHANNEL 13 investigation.

    A member of New Life Church tells NEWSCHANNEL 13 that Haggard took advantage of him sexually one night. The man, in his early 20’s, claims he was paid a large sum of money by New Life Church to keep the abuse quiet. Under an agreement with the church he was not supposed to speak of the allegations with anyone outside the church. If he did, he would violate the agreement and would forfeit the money and could be sued by the church.

    He provided NEWSCHANNEL 13 an audio recording of conversations between himself and Haggard. In those conversations Haggard is heard saying the relationship is ‘inappropriate’ and asked for forgiveness.

    Senior Pastor Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church sent a message to members of his church Friday night, after our call on Thursday asking questions about the allegations.

    The church first asked NEWSCHANNEL 13 to send a list of questions, but refused to do an on-camera interview. Church spokesperson Amie Streater told NEWSCHANNEL 13’s Tak Landrock Friday night that they would not be answering the questions we provided to them. But in an interview with the Associated Press on Friday, Senior Pastor Brady Boyd did confirm what our two-year investigation uncovered.

    Haggard knew about the pending NEWSCHANNEL 13 investigation Wednesday when we reached him by text message. He declined comment and told us to contact his publicist at HBO.

    The disclosure comes as Haggard, 52, is about to give a series of high-profile interviews to promote the cable documentary about his time in exile.

    Haggard is scheduled to appear on CNN’s Larry King Live on Thursday, the date of the documentary’s premiere, and already has taped a segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

    In early 2007, New Life Church disclosed that an investigation uncovered new evidence that Haggard engaged in “sordid conversation” and “improper relationships” – but didn’t go into detail. Earlier, a church board member had said there was no evidence that Haggard had sexual relations with anyone but Mike Jones, the former male prostitute.

    Comment by endtimespropheticwords | January 26, 2009

  15. Pastor: New Life will recover from new allegations
    Jan 25 05:24 PM US/Eastern
    By DAN ELLIOTT
    Associated Press
    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – New Life Church will recover from new allegations in the 2-year-old sex scandal that brought down founder Ted Haggard, its pastor said Sunday.

    Brady Boyd encouraged his Colorado Springs congregation and reminded them of their “holy tenacity,” two days after revelations that a male church volunteer reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard.

    It’s the second such claim against Haggard. In late 2006, a male prostitute in Denver said he had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with the former New Life pastor.

    “I’m sorry that this wound has been reopened for many of you,” Boyd told the congregation Sunday. “One day we may have a little scar tissue, but the wounds will not define us.”

    Haggard had confessed to undisclosed “sexual immorality” after the earlier allegations, left New Life and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He has declined to comment on the new claim.

    On Friday, Boyd said church officials had learned of the second set of claims against Haggard in late 2006, shortly after the male prostitute made his allegations.

    Boyd said an “overwhelming pool of evidence” pointed to an “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” between Haggard and the male volunteer for an extended period of time.

    Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time and that he was certain the man was of legal age when the relationship began.

    Boyd said that under a legal settlement the church reached with the man in 2007, neither side was to discuss the matter publicly. He said he went public only after learning the man had talked to a local television station.

    KRDO-TV reported that the man gave the station an audio recording of his conversations with Haggard. In them, Haggard calls the relationship “inappropriate” and asks for forgiveness, the station said.

    Boyd said the settlement paid the man for counseling and college. He said the money came from insurance, not member’s contributions.

    Church officials said Boyd would not comment Sunday beyond his remarks to the congregation.

    New Life members and leaders said the latest public disclosures were no surprise.

    In early 2007, the church disclosed that an investigation uncovered evidence that Haggard engaged in “sordid conversation” and “improper relationships”—but didn’t go into detail.

    “I don’t think the people in the church are surprised,” said Wanda Moore, who works in pastoral care for women at New Life. “They’re disappointed and they’re hurt.”

    But Jessica Sheasby, an associate child pastor for New Life, said church members she has spoken to have been “very upbeat” since the new disclosures.

    “I’ve actually heard a lot of hope, because they know that Pastor Brady is one that protects us and takes care of us,” she said.

    Comment by Brad | January 27, 2009

  16. This makes the church look bad..all those different leaders..being exposed with their sexual sins..right out there is the media..how about all the members who commit the same kinds of sin..there is way too much going on today in our churches with sexual sins..a call for ‘purity’ would be a wiser thing to promote..”Be Holy, for I am Holy”…

    Comment by Lela | January 28, 2009

  17. I had read somewhere that Ted Haggard was John Bevere’s senior pastor, is that true? I’m thinking about Bevere’s books regarding submitting to those in authority over you, and if anyone has read these, it’s really weird, if you ask me.
    I have had disagreements with my own family members against Bevere’s teachings because I’ve been through abuse from church leaders myself (in several churches I might add), although none of it was sexual. More often than not, church leaders have their board members eating out of their hand, so there is no true accountability.
    As someone who has never been a church leader, I was never taken seriously, and when I did try to blow the whistle, there truly was Hell to pay.
    I pray God brings this whole control system crashing to the ground SOON.

    Comment by Cathy | January 28, 2009


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