BAR: WEST LOBBY BAR
Everything at the Broadmoor is, well, broad. You know, big. Except the tiny West Lobby Bar, tucked into a corner. Just a few seats at the bar, just a few tables in a sunken enclave. Doors open onto a patio, which is covered and heated, so you can enjoy cocktails al fresco, good weather or bad. It’s more fun when it’s bad. Gazing at the lake, sipping a martini at the start of a summer rainstorm? Heavenly.
GRILLED: TED HAGGARD
Ted Haggard, 54, is the most scrutinized evangelical pastor in Colorado, probably the nation. Born in Indiana, he found Christ at 16, and soon caught on as an associate pastor in Baton Rouge, La. He moved to Colorado Springs in 1984 and founded New Life Church with just 22 people. It grew to 14,000, and he became president of the National Association of Evangelicals. His fall came in late 2006, when a male prostitute claimed Haggard had paid him for sex and drugs. Within days Haggard resigned and fled to Arizona with his wife and five children. In June 2008, the Haggards quietly returned to Colorado Springs. This past spring, Haggard opened St. James Church in a barn on his property. The church quickly outgrew the barn and recently drew 350 people to a meeting room in Pikes Peak Center. An Old Testament rainstorm is falling when Haggard arrives at the Broadmoor in jeans and a polo shirt. He orders a Coke with a lime.
BH: So what’s the headline? Ted Haggard is back?
Haggard: I suppose that is up to others.
BH: How has the return to Colorado Springs been for you?
Haggard: Wonderful. The first year we were here, I never had to pay for a meal of my own in a restaurant. Another patron or the manager or the wait staff would welcome me home. They couldn’t have been more gracious.
BH: Do people point at you in restaurants or coffee shops? Do they whisper, “That’s Ted Haggard”?
Haggard: Never in a negative way. Actually, people treat me much better now than they did prior to the crisis of November 2006.
BH: What do you say to people like you, who have gone to hell and back?
Haggard: I think we can create heaven and hell for other people here on earth. I tell people that hell is such a horrible place that it’s a good place to go through. But you do not want to stay there.
BH: Are you bitter?
Haggard: Sure. But not today. I haven’t felt any bitterness today, so I am grateful. I am very human and very emotional. I am not a perfect man. Jesus came to earth for a reason, and I am it.
BH: You’re the reason?
Haggard: Yes. One of the reasons. I think every person on earth ought to say that.
BH: What about Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker — and John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer? Why do these people think they can get away with it?
Haggard: Nobody thinks they can get away with it. But they know what brings shame to themselves and their family, and they try to hide it, always. It’s not the power or the money. We just read about it and assume that. It’s the human condition, and it’s sad.
BH: Is there more coming? More about you?
Haggard: I don’t think so. But anybody can say anything. The scriptures teach us that there is no such thing as a secret. Humans try to keep secrets, but the best headlines are always other guys’ secrets. Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, these guys never expected these things to be repeated in headlines. Tiger Woods never expected it.
BH: Has the press been fair to you?
Haggard: They have a job to do; they have to fill time and space with the most interesting things they can get. I would rather give them good things to print than bad things. But I figure that’s my contribution during the recession. Giving the press interesting things to publish. I could have walked across the Pacific Ocean multiplying loaves and fishes the whole way and not gotten as much press as I got when Mike Jones came out with his story.
BH: That was a bad day for you.
Haggard: Yes, that was a bad day.
BH: What’s your idea of a good day? Of happiness?
Haggard: To be forgiven and to be in God’s plan.
BH: What’s your greatest fear?
Haggard: To fail.
BH: How are your wife and kids doing?
Haggard: Incredible. The scandal probably rescued our family because all of us had to deal with the core of who we are, what we believed about family and what we believed about God and what we believed about our role in the community. Some people say my wife stayed in the marriage because she was weak, and the opposite is the case. And my kids have not had one experience where they have been treated badly.
BH: Do people think you have atoned for your sins?
Haggard: I think they are aware of their own issues as they go through life, and they know that nobody else is perfect. And they’re grateful that my family stayed together and that we want to finish the story here.
BH: How’s your new church doing?
Haggard: It’s more than delightful, and it’s very simple.
BH: What’s the future of the church?
Haggard: I have no idea.
BH: The center can hold 2,000 people.
Haggard: Yes, but that is not a goal of mine. I thought that at our first meeting it would be a miracle if 20 people showed up, and we had 170. I never dreamed that would be the case.
BH: I read that you would never wear a coat and tie again.
Haggard: That’s my dream, but I have to for weddings and funerals. But this right here is what I wear to church.
BH: Is this the happiest time in your life?
Haggard: I am more satisfied than I have ever been. I have never had goals for money or position or anything like that. I genuinely love the Scriptures. I love people. I love life.
BH: You were an early adopter on the Internet. You Tweet every day, you’re on Facebook, you have a Web page.
Haggard: The Internet is forever, and that changes what happens to you. There is no such thing as time, and there is no such thing as distance on the Internet. In the old days, when someone made a mistake or got into trouble, they would move a few hundred miles away, wait a couple of years and start again. You can’t do that anymore. You can Google me today, and you’ll pull up things that were written in the heat of the crisis when nobody had any facts yet. And beside it will be the article you’ll write.
BH: In the beginning of your wife’s book, “Why I Stayed,” she writes, “Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice.”
Haggard: Love is an action, it’s not something we just feel. A parent can love a child, and in the process of growing up they can feel emotions of great affection and also feel great resentment and anger. But there is the conscious choice to love throughout.
BH: Where did you get that haircut?
Haggard: From an old friend, Ben, in a barbershop. He gossips on my behalf.
BH: What don’t you like about your appearance?
Haggard: I am a Haggard. “Haggard” means tired, worn down, exhausted and overworked. Look at me. I don’t think anyone ever told a Haggard he was handsome.
BH: You don’t drink alcohol.
Haggard: I just don’t like it, I don’t have any moral prohibition against it. My wife drinks wine with a nice dinner. But it tastes bitter to me. I’m the kind of guy who likes snow cones. I like cotton candy and caramel apples.
BH: Food?
Haggard: I like chain restaurants. I like Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Famous Dave’s BBQ, Texas Roadhouse. I like predictability. That’s why my scandal was such an anomaly. I like being predictable. I don’t like surprises. I don’t even like a surprise birthday party. I like to know there is going to be a birthday party in three days and we’re going to get together and eat cake.
BH: What trait don’t you like in yourself?
Haggard: I wish I were a better man.
BH: What don’t you like in other people?
Haggard: Until the crisis, I had only met two people I didn’t like. I enjoyed the variety of people I knew, I liked their personalities. And then I went through about two years when I hated a lot. I deeply experienced the emotion of hatred. I hated people, I hated the circumstance. Now I like people again. I went through emotions that were startling to me.
BH: How did you sleep in those times?
Haggard: My wife and I made a commitment during that time to sleep until we woke up and to eat well and exercise.
BH: What’s your greatest extravagance?
Haggard: I have a couple of ATVs, and my eldest son and I go to the mountains and ride the ATV trails.
BH: On what occasion would you lie?
Haggard: I have lied, but I will not lie again. I lied when I felt a part of me, that I hated the most, was becoming my definition.
BH: What talent would you like to have?
Haggard: I’d like to be able to sing in church. It’s awful.
BH: What’s your most treasured possession?
Haggard: My home.
BH: Were you always planning to return home?
Haggard: Yes. Michael Buble plays a song, “I Want to Go Home,” and we would play it every day in Phoenix.
BH: What’s your favorite thing to do?
Haggard: I love TV. Fareed Zakaria on CNN is my favorite by far. I watch “Cold Case” because there is always a life lesson. I like “American Idol.”
BH: Movies?
Haggard: I liked “Inception.” The four levels of dreams. Over the next 30 years, we are going to learn about the brain and its function. It’s going to be as significant as what we have done with the computer in the last 30 years.
BH: Books?
Haggard: Right now I am reading Friedrich Hayek, everyone ought to read him. And Thomas Friedman’s “The Lexus and the Olive Tree.”
BH: What’s the lowest depth of misery?
Haggard: To have someone dehumanize you.
BH: What do you most dislike?
Haggard: Evil. The suffering we human beings cause other human beings. There is no sense to it.
BH: What’s your greatest regret?
Haggard: My sin.
BH: Motto?
Haggard: Give someone a break.
BH: What do you want on your tombstone?
Haggard: “Sometimes he was decent.”
Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Bill Husted: 303-954-1486 or bhusted@denverpost.com.
