The Ted Haggard Situtation

By now many of you have read and heard about former pastor Ted Haggard, pastor of New Life church in Colorado. He was also president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was a big wig in the contemporary Christianity movement and in politics.

When news first broke I was genuinely sorry for him, the church at large, and for his family. In my conference where I serve I am told that two pastors had to step down because of sexual impropriety over the past four months. Sexual misconduct is a huge problem that effects large and small church pastors. It breaks my heart and the heart of God. I think many in our country feel glad when one goes down, such as Haggard. Sometimes I beleive secretly other ministers are glad in their hearts when this happens, if they are honest. Euguene Peterson in his book Under the Unpredictable Plant says that we should all feel less as human beings when this happens, especially us in the ministerial profession. It is tragic and we have no idea how incidents like this effect the trust of the Christian and Non-Christian worlds. People are so cynical already and this just feeds the fire.

I was talking with some of my fellow pastors about lessons learned from this situation. One, who will go nameless, said the lesson learned is don't buy meth from a gay prostitute at a Denver hotel when you are getting a massage! The greater lesson is that each one of us needs to have people in our lives we can be real with and share what we are thinking in our minds. Sin begins in the mind. I bet Haggard had no place to share these feelings. If we each had our dirtiest laundry spread out on TV none of us would be proud. We need to have at least one person whom we can trust to share what is going on. We need to have permission in those relationships to speak truth to each other and hold each other accountable to the things we hold most dear.

When I was in seminary, I was part of a small group of six guys and one leader. During the life cycle of the group, one of those people got divorced and left seminary. He never addressed it with the group. Another one a few months later had marital problems but was afraid to share them in the group. He later got divorced. Since I graduated, another one has gotten divorced because his wife had an affair. The point is is that we need more than a group, we need people in our lives whom we can be real with. I doubt Haggard had those kind of relationships? Do you?