Ted Haggard takes leave of the pulpit and public stage

The past few days we’ve been scrambling at Spero News to keep up with yet another scandal in the religious community in the US. Make no mistake, falls from great heights brings in readers.

Leadership failure is nothing new, many of us have seen it up close and personal, like reporter Frank Lockwood, and we can default to cynicism, hurt, anger and disgust. Those are all valid emotions, but they are not where we are to end up as we watch from the sidelines if we are followers of Jesus Christ. One of the best places we can be is still and listening, and that is so difficult at times.

My primary emotion has been sorrow, sadness for Mike Jones, who may well sacrifice his freedom by publicly acknowledging he sold drugs and engaged in prostitution. Sadness because his lifestyle made him as easy to dismiss as his accusations. And no matter what political spin anyone wants to place on the Haggard revelations, he has found something in himself that said - enough. His life has been changed. Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer talked to him this week, and has revisited his Haggard article for Harpers Magazine 

I feel sorrow for the Haggard family. Watching Haggard talk to the media from his van, nervously grinning with inappropriate affect, beside a grim wife and kids, I wondered if he was cracking up. We don’t operate in a vacuum, we are not what we do or what we attain. I don’t know how I’d cope with my father having the media glare he sought turned so unrelentingly back on him. How is Ted Haggard’s wife going to feel every time she heads out to a mall? Any safety is replaced by anxiety of turning a corner and wondering who you’ll bump into and how they’ll respond to you.  Out of Ur has a post by Gordon MacDonald worth reading.

It seems to me that when people become leaders of outsized organizations and movements, when they become famous and their opinions are constantly sought by the media, we ought to begin to become cautious. The very drive that propels some leaders toward extraordinary levels of achievement is a drive that often keeps expanding even after reasonable goals and objectives have been achieved. Like a river that breaks its levy, that drive often strays into areas of excitement and risk that can be dangerous and destructive. Sometimes the drive appears to be unstoppable. This seems to have been the experience of the Older Testament David and his wandering eyes, Uzziah in his boredom, and Solomon with his insatiable hunger for wealth, wives and horses. They seem to have been questing—addictively?—for more thrills or trying to meet deeper personal needs, and the normal ways that satisfy most people became inadequate for them.

Ted Haggard’s letter to New Life Church.

Anger is also part of my sorrow, anger at how we (yes, me too) have bought into an ongoing lies about culture wars, others, power and success. The Internet Monk has a post up called The Tactics of Failure: Why The Culture Wars Make Sense to Spiritually Empty Evangelicals. He also takes on those who blame failure of doctrine or Satan in The Passion of the Haggard.

In the intensity of getting the story together, gathering, checking facts, sorting rumours, my black humour came out by joking about when ‘the book’ is coming out. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen soon, if ever. Grace takes time to seep into our being, mercy is not cheap.

On October 29th, Ted Haggard preached what would be his last sermon at New Life Church, unaware of the revelations that would come to light in the coming week. He opened his sermon with this prayer:

Heavenly Father give us grace and mercy, help us this next week and a half as we go into national elections and Lord we pray for our country. Father we pray lies would be exposed and deception exposed. Father we pray that wisdom would come upon our electorate, and that they would think with clarity and with decisiveness, and Lord, that we would be a model for the whole world to see how people can disagree passionately but the rule of law  will prevail.” (via J-Walking)

Was Haggard aware God would answer?

God is unbelievably patient with our self-deception and our sin.
Sin is not a popular word in our culture, I have no use for the press releases that use the word mistake in this Haggard saga.
I used to teach archery, and  the word sin means ‘missing the mark’. It’s an archery concept, and anyone who has tried the sport can understand it. What we miss is not only our failure to live up to all He created us to be, our need to be in relationship with Him, His amazing love that patiently and relentlessly heals us. We break the law of love. 
In my life, God has never been impatient or hurried in His dealings with me. 
The Old Testament is an interesting read, time after time we see people fail quite spectacularly. In the Old Testament I don’t see a God of  just anger, wrath and endless laws, I see in a series of books that are unique in any religious and spiritual literature. God, the great I am, Creator; covenants with people and begins through time to reveal who He is.  Throughout hundreds of  OT years He unfolds as provider, faithful, healer, love, merciful, patient. (communicable attributes).  We see we are made in His image, and it changes us.
I’m not a preacher, I’m not a theologian, others can speak more eloquently and deeply to holiness and Presence. I am one who needs Him.

I feel a bit of fear to be honest. While I try to stay away from relentless blog discussion of how Christians should be and the terrible tangle of religion and politics, I understand the glee online, the disgust, the honest disdain of what western Christianity sinks to and looks like. We as a group in the west have failed over and over to help ourselves and others become disciples, and have often succumbed to becoming immature, angry consumers, blaming everything and everyone but our own falleness.

Some years ago, everything I loved and thought I was, was ripped away in a short period of time  My home, my job, my health, my possessions, my mind. A person who came into my life and loved me deeply died too soon and too unfairly. My dog was shot. Everything. Gone.  It was a time of swift catastrophe and I crumbled into a terrible silence. It took sacrifical time from faithful hard working people from all walks of life to restore me.  A friend reminds me often of a night spent on the floor, weeping for me and telling me over and over God was not finished with me. I was beyond lost, convinced even God had forsaken me. I believed I would never function again, never be able to let people know how high, wide, deep and complete His love is for us.
I’m a broken person, but not abandoned. Broken,  not useless. He is faithful, and  I couldn’t have believed in a future where there would be amazing opportunities to reach out to more people than I would have dared dreamed possible.  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and if the spirit is wounded, who can mend it?” I know that I know from my own life that those our society considers unredeemable are not lost to Him.

I hope those that are ‘overseeing’ Haggard do not let him run ahead of his needs and push him back into the falseness that much of evangelicalism has become. We love a good redemption story, but that redemption can only come from God’s grace, in His way and in His time. Peace paid a great price so we could have peace. 
Some of these oversee guys scare me – because they are in the same place Haggard was.
I will chose to  hold different hope. Jesus promised he would keep his church, and history is resplendent with millions of quiet faithful mature believers around the world. He has. 

Songwriter Dallas Holm sums up my sadness in ‘Just Don’t Feel Like Dancing.’

Hungry babies dying every day

Doesn’t seem much help is on the way

And I… I just don’t feel like dancin’.

There’s a war each time you turn around

Seems like peace will never quite be found.

And I… I just don’t feel like dancin’.

Sure I’ve got Your joy in my soul

And I’m glad that Your love has made me whole.

I guess I’m as happy as I can expect to be.

I just don’t feel like dancin’.

There’s a young man tired of his life.

Thinking maybe he’ll just leave tonight

And I… I just don’t feel like dancin’.

Little children missing by the score.

I don’t think that I can take no more.

And I… I just don’t feel like dancin’.

There’s a young girl dying in her heart.

Stopped a life that she had helped to start.

And I… I just don’t feel like dancin’.

Sure I’ve got Your joy in my soul

And I’m glad that Your love has made me whole.

I guess I’m as happy as I can expect to be.

I just don’t feel like dancin’.