Ted Haggard is back in the spotlight.
He could no more stay away from it than a moth can from a flame.
When we seize the spotlight it should come as no surprise when it swings back at us, fairly or not.

I think he’s failing to understand that his use of a bully pulpit for years and his spectacular self-deceit, lying and public fall is going to follow him the rest of his life. 
God forgives, but forgiveness is not divine permission to get back behind a pulpit. 

I went over to his site (yes, Haggard has a website) and it is being rebuilt, so I can’t hear what he preached in a friends independent church in Indiana.
It looks like Haggard is building up for a comeback again. (He tried last year)

He certainly knew what buttons to push and how to rationalize.
He now says he was sexually molested, it is not a claim that can be proven.

The church that let him preach doesn’t appear to have advertised his appearance, his ’sermons’ are not on the church website. His appearance is not on the church calendar.*
This church is an independent one in a town of about 9 thousand people.
About 300 people attend.

I doubt this congregation that paid him to preach grasps how toxic Haggard is.
I don’t doubt they want to believe his past sexual behavior is a disease, an aberration, a result of trauma, something to be ’saved’ from, a stranger/danger bogeyman, victim to redemption story.
So that’s what he gave them.

My dad was pretty successful. He had a lot of workers One of those workers had a sexual experience with me. I was 7 years old.

No.
If this experience is true, you were sexually molested.
It wasn’t a sexual experience.
It was a crime.
Sexual experiences happen between consenting adults.
Molestation occurs in power imbalanced relationships like child/adult, employer/employee, doctor/patient, priest/congregant. It’s sex as power, not a sexual experience.

Haggard is a master rationalizer and a divided man who cannot hold down a none public job, accept appropriate counselling or grasp the consequences of his actions.

I wonder who leaked the story Haggard was preaching at a small church in Indiana on the anniversary of his national implosion two years ago? 

“There I was, fifty years old, a conservative Republican. Loving the word of God, an Evangelical, Born-Again, spirit-filled, charismatic–all those things. But some of the things that were buried in the depths of the sea from when I was in the second grade started to rage in my mind and in my heart.”

Here I am a conservative Republican.
Oh.

“My wife–all my shame and sin was placed on her,” he said. “People treated her as if she had fallen. And my children, they all went through carrying my shame. And I am so sorry that I did that to my family.”

“There came a moment in my life,” he said, “when we were so alone and there was so much despair that I became suicidal. And I’d figured out how I was going to kill myself and rid the world of the horrible curse of Ted Haggard.”

Oh.

He got caught last year trying to solicit money from former congregants and lying about working in a rehab/church counselling centre.  He publicly announced his ‘restoration’ process was completed 3 weeks after it began. He says he is entering the insurance business.
Does the reality the public isn’t buying his latest re-do have meaning to him?

Someone leaked this return to a pulpit.
I’m inclined to think Ted Haggard did.
His website is down because he posted his guest sermons and they are being taken off his site.

There are 301 news outlets carrying Haggard’s latest re-appearance.
This isn’t just about another fallen preacher, this is about evangelical high level hypocrisy and deceit (self and other) that has burned into the public conscience.
It was the prostitute who told the truth, not the power preacher.
Re-dos aren’t redemption.
His own words this past Sunday indicate a man who remains at war with himself and with others.
A pulpit is not a place to have that battle.

Even Christianity Today’s leadership blog picked up on Haggard re-appearance with extreme caution.
New Life Church issued a polite direct short statement, similar to their last polite direct short statement.

Update: According to The Denver Post, the church did post the audio of the November 2nd Haggard sermons. There is no trace now he was ever there.