Former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard informed his supporters that the prayer meetings he’s been holding at his house are not the gatherings of a new church. “The prayer meeting is not a church plant,” he wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday in one of two ‘sanity points’. “We had two prayer meetings on our property and will probably have more after the holidays.”
Two hours earlier, Haggard said he had read comments made by “some religious leaders” regarding the prayer meetings he’s been holding each Thursday since Nov. 12. “Does our modern system reward hypocricy (sic) and punish repentance?” he asked.
Since news spread of Haggard’s prayer meetings, many have expressed skepticism over Haggard’s intentions, noting that he had started New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., from the basement of his house at the age of 28 and grew it to become one of the most prominent megachurches in the nation.
Many of Haggard’s critics have also been wary of his recovery process, believing that his return to the spotlight is too much too soon. It has only been three years since a highly-publicized drugs and sex scandal led to Haggard’s resignation from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals and forced him out of New Life Church.
After a former male prostitute claimed Haggard had paid him for sex over the course of three years and had also taken methamphetamines, Haggard admitted to his church that he was “a deceiver and a liar” and described his long struggle as a “repulsive and dark” part of his life. “I desperately need to be forgiven and healed,” he stated in a letter to New Life members.
Since then, Haggard and his family have mostly been in seclusion, coming back out only this past year to promote “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” which debuted on HBO late January and aired throughout the month of February.
Prior to his return, Haggard had gone through at least three different crisis response groups, one of which believed Haggard’s process of restoring was “incomplete” and that his current activities are “insensitive” to New Life Church.
For more, read here.