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Ted Haggard Needs Your Support…

Orginally published on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 6:02 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Well, Ted Haggard is in the news again... this time for a supposed fund raising letter that he shared with a newspaper reporter. There is much buzz going around the internet over the weekend. Is the letter real? (No one, including Haggard or any of his overseers have disputed it yet). Add to that the request that funds go to a non-profit that's supposedly been dissolved that was run by a convict, and you have the makings of another Haggard promotional nightmare.

Here’s the letter, sent to reporter Tak Landrock of ABC TV station KRDO:

Tak,

Gayle and I, along with Alex (16) and Elliott (14) have decided to move into the Phoenix Dream Center on October 1st. The Phoenix Dream Center is a half-way house for the homeless, those coming out of prison, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and other broken people. I identify.

The building is sponsored by Phoenix First Assembly, our new church home, but the workers are volunteers. The Dream Center also houses a church called “The Church on the Street.” I met the pastor and he asked me if I would be willing to counsel some of the men and to teach the group from time to time. The woman directing the ministry to women invited Gayle to teach and minister to the women.

Gayle and I spoke to the boys about it, and after a series of discussions with several leaders and our pastor, Tommy Barnett, we decided to serve the dream center in whatever capacity asked, whether it’s cleaning the building, hosting a visiting group, attending a meeting, or facilitating a study. In order to increase our availability to serve, we have decided to move and live in the Dream Center.

As a result, the Phoenix Dream Center team is creating an apartment for our family by combining a small, one-bedroom apartment with an adjacent room so our boys will have their own rooms. Even though Alex and Elliott’s drive to school is quite a distance every day, we think it is worth it to be given the privilege of service.

In preparation for the future, Gayle and I are both enrolled at the University of Phoenix at their main downtown campus. Gayle is in the undergraduate program studying psychology. I am pursuing my master of science in counseling degree, which means we are both full time students. Alex and Elliott are both attending a local Christian school. Elliott is playing 8th grade football this fall. Everyone is busy!

It looks as though it will take two years for us to have adequate earning power again, so we are looking for people who will help us monthly for two years. During that time we will continue as full time students, and then, when I graduate, we won’t need outside support any longer.

But for the next two years, we will need support. Between now and the end of the year, we have to find the people who want to help us transition into our future. So I am starting today to let friends like you know that we are raising money for support as we move into the Phoenix Dream Center.

Would you be willing to help us find people who can give a one time gift or make a commitment to help support us monthly for two years? If so, that would be a blessing.

If people want to support us directly, they can mail checks to Ted and Gayle Haggard, 9699 N. Hayden, Suite 108, PMB 180, Scottsdale, AZ 95259. This is a private mail box address that we have been using since we moved to the Phoenix area. If any supporters need a tax deduction for their gift, they can mail it to Families With a Mission at P.O. Box 63125, Colorado Springs, CO 80962. The supporters would need to write their check to “Families With A Mission” and put a separate note on it that it is for the Haggard family, then Families With a Mission will mail us 90% of the funds for support and use 10% for administrative costs.

Thank you so much. We feel our move into the Dream Center is the next step God would have us take. Any help we can get with this will be greatly appreciated and, I believe, rewarded in heaven.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might have an interest. Any assistance we receive will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

God bless,

Ted Haggard
“Preparing”

P.S. Our handicapped son, Jonathan (20) has been taken care of financially by Victory Church (Mike Ware), Church of the Highlands (Chris Hodges) and New Life Church in Colorado Springs since November of 2006. It’s our prayer that these churches will continue helping Jonathan while we’re in this stage of our lives. We are so grateful for their assistance. Their faithfulness to Jonathan and consequently our family has given us room to heal. We are all very thankful for their prayers, love, and kindness.

SOURCE: Colorado Confidential

Christianity Today has put together a nice article on some problems that this letter is having in the media:

First, the e-mail blindsided the group of overseers charged with seeing Haggard through his time of repentance, recovery, and restoration. The Gazette quoted Mike Ware:

“We will review that his statement was premature, and we will talk to him about that. It is not an official release from us,” Ware said. Ware wouldn’t comment on the propriety of Haggard’s plea for money but said he felt it was premature of Haggard to release the statement without first consulting the overseers.

So the first issue is simply that Haggard seems to be operating indepently and ahead of those who were appointed to be his spiritual guardians.

The second issue is the address Haggard’s letter gives where “friends like you” should mail your donations. According to watchdogs in the blogosphere, it is a defunct charity whose mailing addresses belong to a sex offender from Hawaii. Curioser and curioser.

The third issue is raised by Haggard’s assets. I’m sure he can use donations, but he wasn’t exactly poor to start with. And many people who need to start over in midlife use home equity and other assets to tide them over their straitened circumstances. Some even take out student loans.

According to the Gazette:

Haggard received a salary of $115,000 for the 10 months he worked in 2006 and an $85,000 anniversary bonus before the scandal broke, according to church officials. The church’s board of trustees gave him a severance package that included a year’s salary ($138,000). He also collects royalties on his many book titles.

Haggard owns a home in Colorado Springs that has been for sale. It has a market value of $715,051, according to records from the El Paso County assessor.


So… what do you think?  Is this a good letter from Ted Haggard?  Would you support him financially in his next life stage as a result of this letter?  Or do you think he’s not seeing real clearly?  Is all this continued scrutiny fair?

I’d love to hear your input


This post has been viewed 5065 times so far.


  There are 10 Comments:

  • Posted by Marc Backes
    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 7:27 AM

    Todd,

    If, and that’s a big IF, this story is absolutely true, which Christianity Today is saying that it is, then I think it underscores one big point:

    It’s hard for a leopard to change its stripes

    Haggard’s downfall was first in the heart, and then due to lack of true accountability and authority from outside sources in his life.

    To me, the most telling part of the story is the fact that those in charge of his restoration knew nothing of the letter coming out, so it would appear they were pre-empted.

    Some folks, sadly enough, have are irrevocably narcissistic.  Which makes what Jesus said to those who wondered why the Tower fell on some but not others so amazing…

    I really don’t look at Haggard with contempt, I look at Haggard and run to Jesus and beg him to protect me from becoming the same, because apart from the intervening grace of God, it can happen to all of us, whether we want to believe that or not…

  • Posted by Snoop
    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 8:55 AM

    I am having a hard time reconciling these two lines:

    “It looks as though it will take two years for us to have adequate earning power again, so we are looking for people who will help us monthly for two years. During that time we will continue as full time students, and then, when I graduate, we won’t need outside support any longer.”

    and

    “Haggard received a salary of $115,000 for the 10 months he worked in 2006 and an $85,000 anniversary bonus before the scandal broke, according to church officials. The church’s board of trustees gave him a severance package that included a year’s salary ($138,000). He also collects royalties on his many book titles.

    Haggard owns a home in Colorado Springs that has been for sale. It has a market value of $715,051, according to records from the El Paso County assessor.”

    Now, I am the first to come to the defense of Pastors who are not well taken care of by their churches, and I cringe at many of the stories I hear about Pastors living off of food stamps to get by, but this is ridiculous.  The man brought home in ten months more than many people in this country will earn in two years… and yet it is not enough.

    If the $138,000 severance package is not enough, maybe he should consider getting a job.

  • Posted by Paul J.
    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 9:27 AM

    Speaking as someone who has fallen and gone through a Biblical restoration process, I would say that this whole thing smells bad. It appears there’s still some denial in play…

  • Posted by Leonard
    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 9:53 AM

    Power is addicting and nothing threatens power like accountability and humility.  For any pastor, the need to watch out for the drug of power is essential.

    When power acts like a drug in our lives it gets its grip on us through entitlement and self aggrandizing.  In other word you become to big to be in a small place unless the small place has three bedrooms and is being paid for by other people and includes tuition in a private school and payment for graduate school and…

    As for the house; It is not the value of the house that bothers me at all.  My house is worth 2 times as much as when I bought it but I don’t have twice as much.  I am actually so disgusted that I would only type mean things so I will stop.

  • Posted by
    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 12:47 PM

    I had thought Ted Haggard was thru bringing discredit and embarrassment upon the church.  It wasn’t just his fall, I’ll argue with anyone that any of us can fall, it was the blatant hypocrisy and very public nature of his fall.  He needs to go away, work thru his through his time of repentance, recovery, and restoration with the people overseeing the process and stay out of the public eye. 

    It doesn’t matter if not one person gives him a dime, the audacity of him asking will cause people more skepticism and disdain for the church.  It has already caused one non-believer to ask me how I (you Christians) can be so gullible to still give him money.

    my 2 cents…

  • Posted by
    Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 10:04 PM

    This is clearly a bogus letter.  The fact that it suggests that he and his wife have enrolled at the University of Phoenix is clearly a clue that it is all a big joke.

  • Posted by Christian
    Saturday, September 08, 2007 at 3:06 AM

    I had to look at it a couple times but Dale is right I think.

  • Posted by Demetri
    Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 4:50 AM

    Exciting post and blogs. Thank you.

  • Posted by
    Friday, January 30, 2009 at 2:01 PM

    The real scandal is religion’s continued condemnation of gays.  Change is slow, but I hope, in time, the church will finally face the scientific evidence that sexual differences are normal...and there is nothing wrong, sick, deviant, or perverted about homosexual desire.  This will create a huge shift in Christianity, for sure, because people will no longer be able to view the Bible as literally inerrant.  People who accept the diverse spectrum of humanity will find a place for Ted Haggard to serve, if he wants to serve.  If he had been told, as a teen, that he could be loved and accepted by God as a gay man, this scandal might never have taken place.  I hope he will one day he can be free to be his authentic self in public as well as in private..  Don’t we all want this for ourselves?

  • Posted by
    Friday, January 30, 2009 at 5:35 PM

    WJones,

    You must attend Rob Bell’s church. 
    For a Christian to point out the deviant nature of homosexuality is not condemning gays.  Gays sin just like I do and my conscience convicts me of that sin just like it does someone who is gay.  Because of unbelief, the wrath of God abides on them. It is their conscience that condemns them because their conscience is pricked by the truth of God’s Word.

    The Bible is inerrant and we are not. To suggest that it is inerrant shows that you are a “professing” Christian who has never surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ or an unbeliever altogether.  The truth of God’s Word brings conviction of sin as it is supposed to. My compassion to save the lost constrains me to tell everyone the unadulterated truth regardless of whether or not it is popular or politically correct. I have witnessed to homosexuals and have seen both indignation and brokenness as a result.  It is the same reaction I get with heterosexuals as well.  Lying is a sin and so is homosexuality. Gossip is a sin and so is homosexuality. No one sin is greater than the other because they all come with a death sentence. But our God is rich in mercy and will forgive ALL of your sins and give you a new heart with new desires. But you must repent and oddly enough, people hate that message. The inerrant Word of God tells us this is what will happen.  God resists the proud but give grace to the humble and it is the Law of God that breaks the heart and humbles the sinner.  But it is pride that keeps people from truly hearing the truth so they question the inerrancy of Scripture or defer to “scientific research” that tells them it is “normal” to be homosexual.  It is no more normal to be a homosexual than it is to be a thief or a liar or a murderer....our conscience tells us so because God has written His Law on our hearts and put them in our minds. We are all guilty before Him and outside of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us in His life’s blood, all that is left for you and me is the wrath and the fury of a Holy God.

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