Be careful what you say.
Ted Haggard pre controversy
Its got more haggard
The truth, or perhaps more of the truth, has come out about Ted Haggard.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) — Less than 24 hours after being fired from the mega-church he founded, evangelical Pastor Ted Haggard confessed to a “lifelong” sexual problem.
In a letter read to members of his New Life Church Sunday, Haggard said he is “a deceiver and a liar.” Haggard apologized to his congregation in the letter and asked for their forgiveness.
“There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life,” Haggard said in the letter read by Pastor Larry Stockstill, a member of the board of overseers of New Life Church. On Saturday, members of the board ousted Haggard from the 14,000-member church, citing his “sexually immoral conduct. story
Ted got up in front of the whole congregaion and wept and confessed. His wife has said she will stick by him.
Having observed these situations up close before, when a Pastor committs adultery, the only way for real healing for both the leader and the congregation, is for all the dirty stuff to be confessed to, be frank and honest about.
Men, men, men. The Valiant Man course we are doing at Bedford is so relevant to how I am feeling at the moment. Men have to be honest about the struggles they are going through, even if that struggle is one with homosexuality, sexual addiction, or something else which is embarassing and ‘hidden’.
I don’t want to lose any of my mates in the ministry to this sort of thing, nor do I want any of the blokes in my church to succumb to this, or be crippled but it.
We have got to get better at doing life together.
Stats, lies and more stats…. who are you?
Recently I installed a free stat counter on my bog, visible only to me.
A little bit of a test to see if I was rambling to the breeze, although the diversity of people commenting on this blog suggests otherwise.
Who on earth are the 70 or so people who visited the blog on Saturday?
Monday morning apears to be a popular time as well, with about 50 unique hits.
I know this is only a very small blog, but is is nice to see so many people visiting it.
If you visit, and feel compelled, leave a comment, don’t be shy!
Also, if you are a Pastor, I would love you to visit my other project,
the Aussie Pastors Blog.
Dog training, fly fishing and buying meth off a male prostitute
This is a really sad story. Tedd Haggard’s book has been very helpful to me. I really hope the truth comes out, whatever that is.
I hope he find forgiveness and reconciliation with his family.
I hope the Church (his church) deals with the situation with grace, but also with integrity.
It sucks when someone who has been effective in the Lord’s kingdom falls from grace so spectacularly. I don’t count Haggard in the same league as Swaggart and Co. I hope most of this is not true, but I have a bad feeling about this.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Nov 3, 2006 (AP)— The Rev. Ted Haggard admitted Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.
In addition to resigning his post at the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Haggard stepped aside as leader of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending a church investigation. In a TV interview earlier this week, he said: “Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife, I’m faithful to my wife.” story
Rock Music
Love this quote from the Age
“Peter Miles, who presents a Sunday morning gospel music program on 3PBS, points out that church-based singers have been crossing over into mainstream popular music for more than a generation. “A lot of mainstream music borrows from gospel music without knowing about it,” he says.
“I think gospel music, more than most people recognise, is a foundation for mainstream rock music.”
But where performers such as Elvis Presley borrowed from gospel to create a new sound, the pendulum now swings in the other direction, with church-based musicians borrowing from rock’n’roll to make their songs more palatable to a young audience, he says. “Contemporary Christian artists do all sorts of stuff. Christian death metal, bluegrass, reggae, funk …”
In 2005, Woodlands Media estimated that the Christian music market in Australia in the previous 12 months was responsible for 5.6 per cent of local music sales, with a value of $540 million. Jay says the Christian music market remains strong, which, given falling sales in all other sectors, could be evidence that it is growing in popularity”
GO Church!!
Story first see at The Journey
Parenthood
Starting my new series this week. See the flyer in a previous post.
Its tough writing material for parenting, when everyone in church sees your kids, and knows they are not perfect. Yet I am not perfect in any way (news flash I know !) and so hopefully we will all be on a journey together. I am also really conscious that not everyone in our church is a parent. Yet they all are involved with children in some way, and they all have parents. I hope and pray that this is a relevant and timely series for us all at Bedford.
Carols
Can you believe Christmas time is almost upon us???
I have been starting to organise our Christmas Carols service for 06
will be great, and pray it does not rain!!