Members of the New Life Church are learning new details about the scandal involving former pastor Ted Haggard.
Current New Life Rev. Brady Boyd informed New Life congregants in a letter Friday that a young man involved in the church claims he had a relationship with Haggard prior to the pastor’s departure in late 2006.
Boyd will discuss the issue during services at the church Sunday morning.
In published reports, Boyd said the man, who was in his 20s and a church volunteer at the time, said he had a sexual relationship with Haggard that “went on for a long period of time.”
Colorado Springs TV station KRDO channel 13 plans to air an interview with the man Monday night.
“I’m confident that New Life is moving forward in a healthy new direction,” Boyd said Saturday night in a statement.
“Mr. Haggard has been gone from New Life for two years and now I am so sorry that this wound, that was almost healed, has been reopened. I will have to go back to the beginning with a lot of people in our church and take them through the process of healing.”
Haggard was fired from the 10,000-member church in November 2006 after confessing to “sexually immoral conduct.” That confession came after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.
The young man making the new allegations approached New Life officials shortly after the first scandal broke. The church paid the man an undisclosed sum and both parties agreed not to discuss it publicly, according to the letter and published reports.
“New Life Church leadership has reached out to him with compassion by providing him with pastoral care, professional counseling, and financial assistance. We did this with the hope that he would experience healing and move forward with purpose in his life,” Boyd wrote in his letter to the congregation.
“At that time he and church leaders agreed that publishing his allegations or our church assistance to him would not be in his best interest. This decision was made not as an attempt to conceal wrongdoings, but to protect him from those who would seek to exploit him. His actions now suggest that he has changed his mind,” he wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Greg Griffin: 303-954-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com
