“Jesus,” Ted Haggard says, “is starting to put me back together.”
The fallen preacher was writing a “standard response” to several people who had written to him. And over the weekend, one of them forwarded on the private message to Colorado Springs TV station KRDO.
Yes, three months after Haggard was fired after a male prostitute claimed a three-year relationship that included sex and meth, Haggard is still in the fishbowl. In his letter, he says that he and his wife Gayle are moving, away from Colorado Springs and their two-story home in northeastern Colorado Springs, which is currently valued at just under $618,000, to Iowa or Missouri. Both he and his wife will pursue masters degrees in psychology, Haggard wrote, taking classes online and living where it’s affordable.As for the status of the mega-church that Haggard built, stay tuned. In a note to New Lifers on Monday, interim senior pastor Ross Parsley says that the church’s four-member Board of Overseers plans, within the next two weeks, to update staff on “restoration decisions.”
Here is Haggard’s full letter, leaked to the media.
Thank you so much for writing.
Jesus is starting to put me back together. I have spent so much time in repentance, brokenness, hurt and sorrow for the things I’ve done and the negative impact my actions have had on others. That sadness continues as my family and I, along with so many others, go through the painful consequences of my actions. Jesus and his followers, though, have saved my life. As part of New Life’s efforts to help me, they sent Gayle and me to Phoenix for a three week psychological intensive that gave us three years worth of analysis and treatment. We all wanted to know why I developed such incongruity in my life. Thankfully, with the tools we gained there, along with the powerful way God has been illuminating His Word and the Holy Spirit has been convicting and healing me, we now have growing understanding which is giving me some hope for a future.
Gayle and I have decided to move from Colorado Springs to go back to school. We love Colorado Springs so much, and will always regard the believer’s at New Life Church as family, but we have to go in order to let the church determine its own course and for us to retrain. We haven’t decided where we are moving but so far have been offered two places, one in Iowa and one in Missouri. We are both planning on getting our masters in Psychology so we can work together serving others the rest of our lives. Since we are taking our classes on-line, we can live anywhere that’s affordable. Then we’ll travel to location for short in-class requirements.
Thank you so much for your love and prayers during this horrific time of transition in our lives. For the last three months, I’ve not been communicative because I’ve been paralyzed by shame. But as God and people like you forgive me, the sun is starting to rise in my life, I look forward to communicating with greater ease.
God bless,
Ted Haggard
“We are Easter People.”
Cara DeGette is a longtime Colorado journalist and a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com.
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