Time is healing New Life

A year has passed since the Ted Haggard sex-and-drug scandal rocked New Life Church, one of the most powerful megachurches in America and a pillar for the evangelical Christian infrastructure that has come to characterize Colorado Springs.

Things have changed at New Life.

Active membership dropped from 14,000 to 10,000 and donations to the church dipped by 10 percent. Layoffs hit the church’s staff. The church has withdrawn from the national political scene. And New Life members say their swagger is gone, replaced by humility.

“The process has been hard. Everyone had to search their soul and see how to walk through it,” said the Rev. Mike Ware of Victory Church in Westminster, one of the church’s outside overseers. “Some were so hurt they couldn’t go through it. They could not forgive, and that is all right. We aren’t here to judge.”

Christian power brokers such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell scurried to distance themselves from the church or downplayed the importance of this congregation and the National Association of Evangelicals that Haggard once led, back when he was meeting with George Bush and Tony Blair and flashing his milliondollar smile on CNN. “The disclosure of Rev. Ted Haggard’s sordid private life has absolutely nothing to do with Focus (on the Family) or its reach around the world,” Focus founder Dobson declared in a letter to The Gazette.

The muscle-bound angel in the church’s foyer called “The Protector,” that many chided as homoerotic imagery in the wake of the revelations, has been replaced by a simple cross.

New man in charge

And the man in the pulpit is the Rev. Brady Boyd.

Boyd casually paced the stage at New Life Church, peering out at the thousands gathered on a recent Sunday to hear his message.

He was talking about porcupines.

In the dead of winter, packed together for warmth, they sometimes hurt each other with their quills. Some flee the den and freeze to death. But most endure the pain and not only survive but thrive in springtime.

Boyd’s sermon was about human relationships, rejection and trust. It is also a good metaphor for the past year at the wounded megachurch.

“It was like someone close to you had died. We all went through a grieving process — shock, denial, anger,” said Sean White, a stay-at-home dad and New Life Sunday school teacher.

Former prostitute Mike Jones accused Haggard of engaging in a three-year sex-formoney relationship, and of using methamphetamine. Haggard admitted to buying drugs and “sexual immorality.”

Looking back on the year, White said, “I think it removed a certain amount of elitism from our hearts — the ‘We go to New Life Church, we’re the biggest church on the block and our pastor is Ted Haggard,’ mentality.”

Now, Boyd said, the pain of sticking together is passing: “After a long, dark winter it’s like springtime is here again ... There was every reason for people to leave and disband. They did not.”

Sunday attendance has jumped from 6,000 to 7,500 since Boyd was named senior pastor in August, and thousands attend high school groups, college groups or small groups throughout the week. Giving is growing, now down about 8 percent to 9 percent from its peak. The church has a $12 million operating budget and 150 full-time staff members.

Boyd recently finished a sermon series called “Calibrate: Returning to God’s Design” that emphasized a return to normal.

New Life’s leaders say the church will definitely survive, and they hope it will eclipse its Haggard-era success.

“Jim Bakker’s church doesn’t exist anymore and Jimmy Swaggart’s church is a shell of what it was,” Boyd said. “The fact that New Life — a year after the greatest scandal in the last five years of church history — the fact that we are almost back to those levels of attendance and giving and the participation and excitement, it’s a miracle.”

Story of survival

There are practical reasons New Life has survived a tough season.

Part of the credit goes to Haggard, Boyd said, whose leadership style invited people to take ownership over the mission of the church.

Even without Haggard the congregation’s mission didn’t change, or, to quote the most popular phrase at New Life Church after the scandal: “It’s about Jesus, not Ted.”

Haggard also had hired a crew of capable young leaders such as Ross Parsley, Lance Coles, Rob Brendle and Brian Newberg, who guided the church through its recovery and transition. He called his associate pastors his “young Davids,” and the irony is not lost on New Life congregants who know the story of King Saul, who poisoned his relationship with God and tried to kill young David, his heir apparent. Haggard preached on Saul in the last sermon he delivered from New Life’s pulpit.

“It’s been a long, exhausting year, but those young pastors and overseers showed us God is alive here,” said Harvey Richardson, an altar team deacon.

The outside overseers were another key element. The four pastors virtually overnight began guiding the church not only through emotional anxieties, but the practical organizational changes that had to take place. The process was open and decisive.

“I’ve never heard of (a church) that was so well-prepared and handled a difficult situation so well,” said Leith Anderson, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of Wooddale Church in suburban Minneapolis. Anderson was named interim NAE president to replace Haggard and recently was named permanently to the post.

He said few churches have such an emergency plan in place, except some denominations that have large organizational hierarchies. The plan was created to provide leadership if something happened to the senior pastor and provided for disciplining the senior pastor, if necessary.

The final piece of the survival puzzle was the hundreds of small study groups designed to take the anonymity out of attending such a huge church. It was in those small groups, White said, that people clung to each other for emotional support.

“If those things (leadership, emergency plan and small groups) had not been in place, there would be a big ‘for sale’ sign on the building,” Boyd said.

What’s next

One of Brady Boyd’s main selling points to his congregation is that he’s not too flashy or ambitious.

“With Brady (Boyd) coming, there is a sigh of relief,” said new member Paul Sohlstrom. “He hasn’t really come in and changed everything, from what I’ve seen.”

Boyd agrees he hasn’t made splashy moves since his arrival.

Instead he’s created a detailed organizational chart, he’s encouraged his associate pastors to go home to their families after months of grueling hours, and he’s set aside New Life’s once-active media department in favor of being the church’s lone spokesman.

Not exactly sensational changes, but they highlight the smaller scope of the new New Life, and a new focus on matters close to home.

That theme also stretches to Boyd’s goals for the church. He wants to turn the church’s focus outward, not only to the world missions it has always done well, but to its own backyard.

“Long term, I’d love to have a huge outreach to the poorest people in Colorado Springs, where we give clothes, training, food, provide financial counseling, to do everything we can to address the poverty needs of our city,” he said.

“You can’t experience life until you give of your life to someone who can’t give back. It tests your motives. The only reward you get back is ‘thank you.’”

As for repairing the tarnished reputation of New Life Church, his plan is simple: “Our strategy to rebuild our reputation is by doing the right thing for a really long time. It’s not more complicated than that.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0371 or carol.mcgraw@gazette.com