Minister's Own Rules Sealed His Fate (Haggard)

[NVMojo]

Church trying to clear up an image problem???

NYT: November 19, 2006

COLORADO SPRINGS, Nov. 15 — The four ministers who assembled here two weeks ago to decide the fate of the Rev. Ted Haggard were facing a painful choice.

A male prostitute had accused Mr. Haggard, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical ministers, of engaging in a three-year affair with him and of using drugs. Then, in a private emergency meeting, Mr. Haggard promptly confessed to the ministers — his handpicked board of overseers — that he had engaged in sexual immorality.

Now, the question was, what punishment did Mr. Haggard deserve? The board had two options: discipline him or dismiss him as senior pastor of New Life Church. Could he take a leave of absence, repent, receive spiritual counseling and return to ministry?

The answer became clear the next morning, the overseers said, when Mr. Haggard gave an interview to a television news crew as he pulled out of his driveway with his wife and three children in the car. He denied having sex with the male prostitute, and said he had bought methamphetamine but never used it. The overseers said they watched Mr. Haggard, affable as ever, smile grimly into the television camera and lie.

“We saw this other side of Ted that Friday morning,” said the Rev. Michael Ware, one of the overseers. “It helped us to know whether this would be a discipline or a dismissal.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/us/19haggard.html?ref=us

The Rev. Mark Cowart, another overseer, agreed. “It was a defining moment.”

[leesa]

1. Well, he was stupid enough to lie on camera. I suspect THAT was the

defining moment. After all, deception is one of their favorite tools.

[MADem]

2. Overseer. What a loaded word.

I happen to know one of the guys who was "overseeing" the religious abuses at the Air Force Academy, many of them brought on by this bastard and those like him. There's gotta be a grim sense of "What goes around, comes around" going through some minds nowadays....

In many ways, Mr. Haggard had sealed his fate long before the driveway interview by establishing a mechanism for accountability in his church that gave a committee of his peers ultimate authority to remove him. Years ago, Mr. Haggard had asked four of his closest friends, all senior pastors of their own churches, to serve as a board of overseers. They had only one function: if Mr. Haggard was ever accused of immoral conduct, they would act as judge and jury.

Until the scandal that drove him from the pulpit, Mr. Haggard appeared to be a responsible steward and chief executive of New Life Church and the adjoining World Prayer Center — an evangelical empire that he built from nothing on a bare plateau with sweeping views of the Air Force Academy and Pikes Peak. He was sovereign over a 14,000-member church that answered to no denomination and was in many ways built on his charisma.

Mr. Haggard spelled out his system of checks and balances in bylaws that independent churches in the United States and overseas have adopted as a model. “All of our bylaws are really set up to protect our churches from us,” said Mr. Ware, the senior pastor of Victory Church in Westminster, Colo. “The same bylaws Ted wrote were the same laws by which he was dismissed.”....“To watch his whole world evaporate in less than 24 hours is one of the most humbling and God-fearing experiences I’ve ever encountered,” Mr. Ware said in an interview over a motel breakfast of little but coffee with two other overseers.

Mr. Haggard could not have picked overseers with more potential conflicts of interests. Mr. Haggard, Mr. Ware and the Rev. Larry Stockstill started in ministry together 28 years ago in Baker, La., at Bethany World Prayer Center, where Mr. Stockstill is now the senior pastor.

Ya gotta wonder--did he actually think those guys would COVER for him? Or did he secretly think that he was a BAD boy, wanted to be caught, and needed to be punished? What WAS he smoking? (Well, meth...I guess it really does impair the judgment!!!)...

[Malidictus Maximus]

7. Beats a 2000 year old bureaucracy

accountable to no one. While of course I find such fundies disgusting at least there was a mechanism for removing the top dog, unlike at least one other equally homophobic, pedophilic and anti-choice religion (to which I used to belong).

[NVMojo]

3. these idiots emulate the White House ...

snip...

In the New Life executive suites, the Rev. Rob Brendle, Mr. Haggard’s young associate pastor, who said he had thought of himself as “Ted’s Karl Rove,” said he was so traumatized he could not yet ask himself if had seen signs of Mr. Haggard’s double life. But Mr. Brendle said he was comforted by the smooth handling of the crisis.

snip...

[msongs]

4. his kids should sue him for divorce citing mental cruelty nt

[bertha katzenengel]

5. Being a former fundy, this makes absolutely perfect sense to me.

This is how they do things. Who are we to judge them?

[last1standing]

6. The correct question is: Who are they to judge us?

Their very condemnation of liberals, progressives, feminists, homosexuals, hippies and whoever else you can think of who isn't them is what allows us to judge them. They put themselves up on a pedestal so they could look down on us. If that pedestal has become mired in the filth they claim we wallow in, then we have every right to point our finger and laugh at them.

That's who we are.

[NVMojo]

8. good point, these people only thrive when they have an evil enemy

and they have made it us.

[bertha katzenengel]

11. Untrue. Many of these churches (can't speak for all - haven't been a member of all)

are filled with love and happiness. The people of many of these churches give - their time and money - until it hurts. They feed hungry people and give out clothing. They run things like Christmas in April - fixing up houses for the old, infirm, or disabled. In so doing the churches I've known require no Bible study or church attendance for these services, no proselytizing session before a mom with hungry kids can take home her box of food.

Many of these churches are communities in themselves, and their members derive comfort from them. They counsel and teach each other. They are friends and family members to each other.

These churches are central to these people's lives, and these people have the right to them. They do not have to hate to be happy. They do not have to hate to have a purpose. And if there were no hate in the world, these churches would still exist.

[Ms. Clio]

14. But you are not really talking about the megachurches and the TV ministries, are you?

I don't doubt what you say is true for small local community churches, who don't seek political power to force others to bend to their will, even to the extent of a religious person considering himself his spiritual leader's "Karl Rove."

[bertha katzenengel]

15. I have never been a member of a "megachurch." But do you honestly

automatically doubt them? Not each one is led by a liar, a political grandstander, or a greedy billionaire.

As to TV ministries -- those are not churches. I don't know if they're led by those who follow Christ's two commandments, but they are not churches.

[Ms. Clio]

16. yes, I do automatically doubt most of them, sorry

from what I've seen in my own area, they are light years away from what you described in your post above.

[last1standing]

19. And how many of these "loving" churches preach tolerance for others?

I get very sick of hearing about how good and kind these hatemongers are. They're only loving to those who look like them, act like them, vote like them, and have sex like them. If you're one of that small group then they can't get enough of you, but if you're not then you're going to Hell, Sinner!

I've been to many, many fundie churches and they're all the same. If you went to one that wasn't like that then you weren't in a fundie church. Maybe some education on the difference between a Christian and a fundie would help.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but when you've been attacked emotionally, spiritually, and physically as often as I have for not following someone else's belief system, you get a little tired of hearing how good hearted they all are.

[bertha katzenengel]

9. Both points are valid. Who are we to judge them? And who are they to judge us?

IMO it's not right to say, "well, they judge us, so hell yeah, I have a RIGHT to judge them."

Quit the judging. Co-exist. Purple Nation. Live in peace. No?

[ljm2002]

12. "Quit the judging. Co-exist. Purple Nation. Live in peace. No?"

In a word, NO.

Since these people live by judging others, against the precepts of the very figure / book they claim to adhere to, I say we are 100% within bounds to go ahead and judge them.

The one time that violence is justified, is when it is in self defense. This "judging" stuff can be viewed as a sort of violence; truly, the right wing and the christian fundamentalists have done violence to us liberals by twisting our positions and making our own belief system a dirty word to the populace at large. At that point, we have the right to defend ourselves, and to do it in like kind.

I do judge Haggard and his ilk, and I make no apology for doing so.

[bertha katzenengel]

13. Okay. Knock yourself out. n/t

[ljm2002]

17. Hmmm, don't remember asking for your permission...

...to "knock myself out", or anything else for that matter.

To each his/her own. I do not bash all things religious, never have. I respect that humans have spiritual needs, that religious organizations often do good works, and that many of the followers in any church are sincere, fine people. However, Ted Haggard's, Christian-in-name-only mega church deserve what they got with this scandal. They built a church based on hero worship and idolatry of the founder, something which is BTW specifically mentioned in the Bible as something not to do. They "pray on the street corners, to be seen by men" -- another thing that is recommended against in the Bible. They started out by praying in front of the homes of people they said were witches, running several of them out of town in the process. They talk about gays as sinners, to be reprogrammed -- yet, there is no re-programming for adulterers, nor gluttons, nor any of the other 7 deadly sins, nor for breaking actual Commandments. One could argue that they have broken the Commandment against idolatry themselves.

No, these people's teachings are rank with hypocrisy, and it needs to be pointed out. They have spent years infiltrating our institutions, our schools, and our military -- and you think we should live and let live? That is not what they have been doing; they are active soldiers in the culture wars that they started, and they'll not be satisfied until we have a theocratic form of government. I am not willing to be silent in the face of that. If you find that judgmental, so be it.

[last1standing]

20. They judge my thoughts and emotions. I judge their actions.

When they stop preaching hate, I'll stop hating them. When they stop ridiculing others, I'll stop ridiculing them. Supposedly, Jesus said "Let he who is among us without sin cast the first stone", he never said a Damned word about the second. These hatemongers started this and until they stop I'm going to defend myself.

Why do you want all of us who are truly persecuted by these bastards to stop protecting ourselves? Why should we just bend over and let them skewer us? What gives them the right to attack but takes away our right to defend?

[Perky]

10. They do have the right to judge themselves however

And kudos ought to go to the oard who dispensed with Haggard so quickly.

[ljm2002]

18. Kudos because they "dispensed with Haggard so quickly"?

Right -- it couldn't have been because he has become RADIOACTIVE and made them all look bad.

No, I'm sure it wasn't that.


:eyes:

[Ms. Clio]

21. yeah, kudos for covering their asses with such speed and finesse

:rofl:

[Perky]

22. They did what they were supposed to do.

They could have drug it out for weeks. He could have said No. You seem to want to complain no matter what they did,

[ljm2002]

23. You are right...

...I do want to complain no matter what they do.

I admit it. I do not like the organization, how they started, how they have infiltrated our schools and military, how they want us to have a theocracy. I despise these people and their organization. And I laughed long and hard at Teddy's predicament.

Normally I would have compassion for a person who cannot help their compulsive behavior and is caught out. But, when it's a hypocritical right wing religious nut -- no. He, and his "overseers", get as much sympathy from me... as they give to gays.

But that's just me.

[karlrschneider]

24. 99 percent of all churches are largely populated by frightened

hypocrites, which is precisely where their leaders want them. Most of the 'good works' they actually manage to do have more to do with self-insurance against their mythological Lake of Fire than a
genuine desire to improve the human condition (of others.)


Co-dependency taken to absurd levels.

[Perky]

25. That has not been my experience at all

WHen was the last ime you were in a church?