Ted Haggard, former senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, is in Arizona to find “spiritual and emotional” counseling, a church official said Thursday.
New Life associate pastor Rob Brendle said Haggard and his wife, Gayle, will spend the next several weeks at the unnamed facility.
Haggard resigned as senior pastor and as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals after reports about his involvement with a male escort.
On Thursday, 9News reported that Haggard’s attorney, Leonard Chesler, said that Haggard has begun seeing a private therapist and that he and his wife will move to the out-of- state restoration center.
Both will move to the center for the first phase of the restoration, then Haggard’s wife will move back to Colorado Springs “to be with her children and her women’s church groups,” 9News reported
Haggard, according to Chesler, has told him he “will not return to the pulpit until he is certain that he will cause his congregation no further damage,” according to the television station.
Staff writer Eric Gorski contributed to this report.
