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One Year Later: New Life’s Swagger Replaced by Humility
A year has passed since the Ted Haggard sex-and-drug scandal rocked New Life Church, one of the most powerful megachurches in America and a pillar for the evangelical Christian infrastructure that has come to characterize Colorado Springs. Things have changed at New Life. Active membership dropped from 14,000 to 10,000 and donations to the church dipped by 10 percent. Layoffs hit the church’s staff. The church has withdrawn from the national political scene. And New Life members say their swagger is gone, replaced by humility.
“The process has been hard. Everyone had to search their soul and see how to walk through it,” said the Rev. Mike Ware of Victory Church in Westminster, one of the church’s outside overseers. “Some were so hurt they couldn’t go through it. They could not forgive, and that is all right. We aren’t here to judge.”
Christian power brokers such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell scurried to distance themselves from the church or downplayed the importance of this congregation and the National Association of Evangelicals that Haggard once led, back when he was meeting with George Bush and Tony Blair and flashing his milliondollar smile on CNN. “The disclosure of Rev. Ted Haggard’s sordid private life has absolutely nothing to do with Focus (on the Family) or its reach around the world,” Focus founder Dobson declared in a letter to The Gazette.
The muscle-bound angel in the church’s foyer called “The Protector,” that many chided as homoerotic imagery in the wake of the revelations, has been replaced by a simple cross.
There are practical reasons New Life has survived a tough season.
Part of the credit goes to Haggard, Boyd said, whose leadership style invited people to take ownership over the mission of the church.
Even without Haggard the congregation’s mission didn’t change, or, to quote the most popular phrase at New Life Church after the scandal: “It’s about Jesus, not Ted.”
Haggard also had hired a crew of capable young leaders such as Ross Parsley, Lance Coles, Rob Brendle and Brian Newberg, who guided the church through its recovery and transition. He called his associate pastors his “young Davids,” and the irony is not lost on New Life congregants who know the story of King Saul, who poisoned his relationship with God and tried to kill young David, his heir apparent. Haggard preached on Saul in the last sermon he delivered from New Life’s pulpit.
“It’s been a long, exhausting year, but those young pastors and overseers showed us God is alive here,” said Harvey Richardson, an altar team deacon.
The outside overseers were another key element. The four pastors virtually overnight began guiding the church not only through emotional anxieties, but the practical organizational changes that had to take place. The process was open and decisive.
“I’ve never heard of (a church) that was so well-prepared and handled a difficult situation so well,” said Leith Anderson, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of Wooddale Church in suburban Minneapolis. Anderson was named interim NAE president to replace Haggard and recently was named permanently to the post.
He said few churches have such an emergency plan in place, except some denominations that have large organizational hierarchies. The plan was created to provide leadership if something happened to the senior pastor and provided for disciplining the senior pastor, if necessary.
The final piece of the survival puzzle was the hundreds of small study groups designed to take the anonymity out of attending such a huge church. It was in those small groups, White said, that people clung to each other for emotional support.
“If those things (leadership, emergency plan and small groups) had not been in place, there would be a big ‘for sale’ sign on the building,” Boyd said.
You can read more from The Gazette’s article here. They also have about 45 minutes of audio available featuring a interview with new Senior Pastor Brady Boyd.
This post has been viewed 265 times and was added on November 13, 2007 by Todd Rhoades. Filed under: Engaging Culture Current Events and the Church Share this post with a friend right now! View reactions to this post at other blogs... You can really help us out by subscribing to our free RSS feed with your favorite feed reader, or here at Bloglines. Also, you can add us to your favorites at Technorati.
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I'm Todd Rhoades... the MMI guy. I'm also on the team at Leadership Network (although that doesn't mean that they endorse everything I write here). In my past life, I was the founder and developer of a website named ChurchStaffing.com.
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