Ted Haggard Draws Over 100 to Prayer Meeting

[brooklynite]

Source: The Christian Post

Around 110 people showed up for a prayer meeting Thursday evening in the home of former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard.

Though the meeting, which Haggard said was arranged to connect with friends and help people, was expected to draw between five and 20 people, it ended up drawing around 80 of Haggard's acquaintances and around 30 people Haggard had never met.

...snip...

Thursday’s prayer meeting was held roughly three years after a drugs and sex scandal led to Haggard's resignation from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals and forced him out of the church he founded, New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

In November 2006, a former male prostitute claimed Haggard had paid him for sex over the past three years and had also taken methamphetamines. In a letter to New Life members, Haggard called himself "a deceiver and a liar" and described his long struggle as a "repulsive and dark" part of his life.

With that, he said, "I desperately need to be forgiven and healed."

Read more: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20091116/ted-haggard-draws-over-100-to-prayer-meeting/

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Must be nice to work in a business where you deserve forgiveness as a matter of policy...

[BolivarianHero]

1. One problem...

Is it actually possible to lead a prayer while you're high on crystal meth with a schlong in your mouth?

[get the red out]

2. There are many forms of worship

:evilgrin:

[Christa]

5. Don't know about prayer

but it may lead to a second coming


:evilgrin:

















there is no god and I am his prophet

[laconicsax]

6. Why not?

Catholic priests will lecture people on morality after raping a child.

[Ferret Annica]

3. Were these jerks in a circle as they preformed their worship?

[naaman fletcher]

4. Gosh people are stupid..

How can anyone follow this guy?

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. as an apostate Evangelical myself, I can see how someone like Ted Haggard could have wrapped himself

into a life of self-deception as well as deceiving others.

Perhaps many people may think that a Ted Haggard or a Jim Baker or a Jimmy Swaggert were all consciously-intentional con-artist who deliberately swindled and fleeced their flock. But actually that kind of self-aware conman certainly exist in Evangelical circles - but they are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of times, self-deceit as well as deceiving others becomes so integrated into their day to day lives, they do genuinely start believing their own lies in spite of reality hitting them in the face every day of their life. Because the truth is just too painful for them to face.

It is far more likely that Ted Haggard has spent his entire life repressing and lying to himself about his own natural inclinations. To someone who subscribes to the kind of interpretation of Pentecostal Christianity that Ted Haggard had embraced, admitting to himself that he was homosexual would have been unthinkable - For someone of his religious persuasion, it would be like someone admitting to themselves that they are a pedophile or something else completely beyond the pale of what they could live with.

Such a conflict between ones belief system and what they know they really are creates such a self-deceiving mechanism that when he was denouncing homosexuality as a vile sin, he may very well have been on a certain level preaching to himself.

[lumpy]

8. "...certain level preaching to himself..." not much of a preacher

if he couldn't get through to himself. The fool should try to redeem himnself by doing some genuine good in the world instead of 'preaching' to others to follow the tenets of Christ.

[Javaman]

9. Meh, preaching to meth heads in not my idea of "prayer meeting" nt