Ted Haggard

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Who Ted Haggard Is

Ted Haggard is the American pastor who founded New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 1984 and built it into one of the largest congregations in the United States, and who served as president of the National Association of Evangelicals from 2003 until 2006. In November 2006 a Denver man named Mike Jones publicly alleged that Haggard had paid him for sex over a period of years and had bought methamphetamine from him. Haggard denied parts of the account, admitted buying the drug and receiving a massage, admitted in a letter to his congregation that he was a deceiver and a liar, resigned the national office and was removed from his pulpit by the church's own board of overseers.

The episode was documented unusually closely, because Haggard was at the height of his public influence when it broke, because it broke days before a national election, and because he responded on camera almost immediately. Much of the record consists of his own statements. That makes it possible to write about him with unusual precision, and it makes the distinction between what he admitted and what was alleged against him worth keeping straight.

This page is about one man: what he built, what he taught, what happened in 2006, what the church's own investigation concluded, and what he has done since. It does not argue about whether New Life Church was a healthy church in general terms, and it does not attempt a verdict on Haggard's standing before God, which belongs to God alone.

Building New Life Church

Ted Arthur Haggard was born in 1956 and grew up in Indiana. He came to Colorado Springs in the early 1980s and began holding services in the basement of his house. The congregation that grew out of those meetings became New Life Church, founded in 1984. It moved through rented and purchased buildings as it grew, and by the middle of the 2000s it occupied a large campus on the north side of the city with its own auditorium.

New Life reported roughly 14,000 members at the time of Haggard's resignation in 2006. That placed it among the largest congregations in the country. It was charismatic in worship and evangelical in doctrine, with an emphasis on intercessory prayer that shaped much of its public identity. Haggard also founded the World Prayer Center, a facility adjacent to the church built around continuous organized prayer and the collection of prayer requests from around the world.

What he taught

Haggard's preaching was mainstream American evangelicalism rather than anything unusual. He held to the authority of Scripture, conversion through personal faith in Christ, and the ordinary charismatic emphasis on the present activity of the Holy Spirit. He wrote books on church growth and on prayer, and he was widely read among pastors for his practical approach to building congregations. His best known theme was the idea that a city could be changed by organized prayer, an idea associated with what was then called the spiritual mapping and prayer movement.

Haggard's public teaching stayed clear of the claim that faith produces wealth, which is the specific doctrine examined on our page about the prosperity gospel and what Catholic teaching says about it. The criticism he drew concerned the scale of his political access and the confidence of his public moral positions, which is a separate objection.

Colorado Springs

The setting mattered. Colorado Springs had become the headquarters city of a large number of evangelical organizations, and a pastor with a congregation of that size in that city occupied a position of real influence. Haggard's reach ran well beyond his own membership rolls into a network of ministries, publishers and advocacy groups clustered in the same few square miles.

National Prominence

In 2003 Haggard was elected president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella body that describes itself as representing tens of thousands of member congregations across dozens of denominations. The presidency is a spokesman's role rather than an office with authority over member churches, and Haggard used it as such. He appeared frequently in national media as an interpreter of evangelical opinion.

He was reported at the time to take part in a regular conference call between evangelical leaders and the White House during the presidency of George W. Bush. Haggard himself spoke about that access in interviews. The reporting on how much influence it actually carried varied, and this page states only that the contact was reported and acknowledged.

Two film appearances from 2006 fixed his public image before the scandal broke. He appears in the documentary Jesus Camp, and he was interviewed by the biologist Richard Dawkins for a British television series on religion in which the two men argued about evolution and the interview ended in open hostility. Both were released in the same year that his ministry collapsed, which meant that many people first encountered him and then immediately encountered the story of his resignation.

November 2006

In the first days of November 2006, Mike Jones, a Denver man who worked as a male escort, went to Denver media with an allegation that he had been paid for sex by Haggard over a period of about three years and that Haggard had bought methamphetamine from him. Jones came forward under his own name, gave on-the-record radio and television interviews, and provided recordings of voice mail messages that he said were from Haggard. He is named on this page because he made his identity public deliberately and has spoken about the episode publicly ever since, including in a book he later published.

Jones gave a reason for the timing. Colorado voters were about to decide a ballot measure defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and Haggard had publicly supported it. Jones said he came forward because he believed it was wrong for a man to campaign publicly on that question while, in Jones's account, privately paying him for sex. The allegation therefore surfaced days before the November 2006 election, which added a political dimension that both supporters and critics of Haggard immediately seized on.

Haggard's first public responses were denials given to Denver television reporters, some of them recorded through the window of his car with his family present. He said he did not know Jones and had not had sex with him. Within roughly forty-eight hours those denials had changed.

What He Admitted and What Was Alleged

The difference between the allegation and the admission is the single most important thing to get right about this case, and it is routinely blurred in summaries. The two are set out separately below.

The allegation

Mike Jones alleged a paid sexual relationship lasting roughly three years, conducted during visits Haggard made to Denver, and the purchase of methamphetamine. That is Jones's account. It was never tested in court, because no criminal or civil proceeding on the question was ever brought. It was reported in mainstream outlets on the strength of Jones's on-the-record statements and the recordings he supplied.

The admission

Haggard admitted, after his first denials, that he had bought methamphetamine from Jones. He said he had thrown the drug away without using it. He admitted that he had received a massage from Jones, whom he said he had contacted after being given his name at a hotel. He did not, in those statements, confirm Jones's description of a three-year paid sexual relationship, and he denied elements of it.

In a letter read aloud to New Life Church on Sunday, 5 November 2006, Haggard went considerably further in general terms. He called himself a deceiver and a liar. He described a part of his life that he said was repulsive and dark and that he had been fighting against for his entire adult life. He apologized to his congregation, his family and the wider church, said he accepted the discipline of the overseers, and asked for forgiveness. His wife Gayle also wrote a letter to the congregation. Both letters were read publicly and reported in full at the time.

Haggard also publicly accepted the overseers' conclusion that he was guilty of sexually immoral conduct, which is set out in the next section. Accepting that finding is itself an admission, and it is fair to describe him as having admitted sexual misconduct. It remains a different thing from confirming Jones's specific account, and this page does not treat the two as equivalent.

The Church Investigation and His Removal

New Life Church had a board of overseers made up of ministers from outside the congregation, a structure intended to provide accountability that the internal staff could not. When the allegations broke, Haggard first placed himself on administrative leave and then the overseers took the matter over.

The overseers investigated and announced within days that they had removed Haggard from his position as senior pastor. Their public statement said that he was guilty of sexually immoral conduct. They did not publish the evidence they had reviewed or the detail of what they had found, and the church has not released it since. What is on the record is the conclusion, the removal, and Haggard's public acceptance of both.

He resigned the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals separately and immediately, before the church process had concluded.

The speed is worth noting because it cuts against the usual pattern. In a large number of cases involving religious leaders, including cases within the Catholic Church, the institutional reflex has been delay, internal handling and reputational management. New Life's overseers reached a public conclusion and acted on it within about a week. Whatever else is true of this case, the church did not attempt to keep it quiet.

Restoration, Exile and the Years After

After his removal, Haggard entered a period of counselling supervised by ministers connected to the overseers, described at the time as a process of spiritual restoration. He and his family agreed to leave Colorado, and New Life reached a severance arrangement with him. The terms were the subject of reporting at the time and are not restated here, because the figures reported varied and no single authoritative account of them exists in public.

In early 2007 one of the overseers involved in supervising the counselling told the Denver Post that Haggard had emerged from an intensive period of therapy and was, in the overseer's words, completely heterosexual. That statement drew immediate ridicule in the national press and criticism from mental health professionals. Haggard himself later distanced himself from it and said in subsequent interviews that his situation was more complicated than that description allowed. The statement belongs in the record as something an overseer said to a newspaper, and this page attributes it to him rather than to Haggard.

The family moved to Arizona. Haggard studied, worked in ordinary employment including a period selling insurance, and did some itinerant speaking. He appeared in a documentary made by the filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi and released by HBO in 2009, which followed him during the period after his removal and showed a man largely without money, without a role and without the network he had spent two decades building.

Gayle Haggard

Gayle Haggard stayed in the marriage. She published a book in 2010 about that decision and about the years after 2006. She has given interviews describing the choice as a deliberate one made in the light of Christian teaching on forgiveness and on the permanence of marriage. Her account is her own public statement and it is reported here as such, without comment on a private decision that is hers to make.

The 2009 Settlement

In January 2009, as the HBO documentary was about to appear, New Life Church's then senior pastor Brady Boyd disclosed publicly that the church had made a settlement payment to a young man who alleged an inappropriate relationship with Haggard while he had been a volunteer at the church. Boyd said the church had reached the settlement some years earlier and had regarded the evidence as substantial. The payment was described by the church as covering counselling and education costs.

Haggard responded publicly. He acknowledged that there had been a relationship with the man, and he disputed the characterization of what had happened, saying in interviews that the account being given overstated the physical nature of it. He also said that the matter had been dealt with at the time.

The status of this matter should be stated exactly. It was a private settlement rather than a court judgment. No criminal charge was reported. The man involved is not identified on this page. The church's disclosure and Haggard's partial acknowledgement are the two things on the record, and they disagree about the extent of what occurred.

The Return to Ministry

Haggard and his wife returned to Colorado Springs in 2010, and that year he announced the founding of a new congregation called St. James Church. It began meeting on his own property and later in rented space. The move was controversial locally, since the original agreement with New Life had contemplated his leaving the area, and Haggard was open in interviews about the fact that he had come back.

He described the new church as open to anyone, including people who would not be welcome elsewhere, and framed his own experience as the reason for that posture. The congregation was small by comparison with New Life. The two churches were separate, and New Life Church did not oversee or endorse Haggard's return to ministry.

Haggard remained a public figure through the 2010s. He gave a long interview to GQ in 2011 in which he spoke about his sexuality in terms considerably more complicated than the 2007 overseer's statement, and which was widely quoted afterward. He appeared on reality television. He gave interviews to religious and secular outlets on the subject of failure, ministry and recovery, and discussed his own removal at length in public over a period of years.

His own framing across those years has been consistent in one respect: he has treated what happened as a moral failure of his own for which he is responsible, and he has not claimed to have been the victim of a conspiracy or a set-up. He has at times complained about how the evangelical world handled his restoration, which is a separate criticism about process rather than a retraction of his admission.

Later Reporting

In 2022 news outlets in Colorado reported allegations by several former members of St. James Church that Haggard had behaved inappropriately with young adult men in the congregation, including physical contact that those men said made them uncomfortable. Haggard denied any sexual intent and said the contact had been misunderstood. This page does not name the outlets, because it cannot confirm the exact titles and dates of that reporting, and it states only what the allegations and the denial were.

The status of that reporting should be stated carefully. These are allegations reported in the press and they have not been tested anywhere else. No criminal charge arising from them has been reported. Haggard denied wrongdoing. No independent investigation with a published finding is known to this page. This page reports the existence and general character of the allegations and the denial, and it does not adjudicate between them or add detail beyond what that description carries.

This page also does not track events after mid-2026, including the current condition of St. James Church, Haggard's current role in it, or any later developments.

What Happened to New Life Church

New Life Church survived the loss of its founder. Brady Boyd was called as senior pastor in 2007 and led the congregation for years afterward. Attendance fell in the period after 2006 and the church went through a substantial rebuilding of its leadership structures.

In December 2007 the church suffered an unrelated tragedy when a gunman opened fire in the parking lot of the Colorado Springs campus, killing two young sisters and wounding others, before the attack was stopped. The gunman had earlier attacked a missionary training centre elsewhere in Colorado. The two events are frequently mentioned together in accounts of the church's history simply because they fell within a year of each other, and they have no connection beyond that.

The congregation's recovery is a genuine part of the story. A church built substantially around one man's personality lost that man abruptly, and it continued. That outcome was not guaranteed, and it depended on a governance structure that had put outside ministers in a position to act.

What This Page Does Not Claim

Several parts of this story are contested, unresolved, or outside what can be responsibly stated, and it is better to say so.

• This page does not state that Mike Jones's full account of a three-year paid sexual relationship is established fact. It was never tested in any legal proceeding. What is established is Haggard's own admission of sexually immoral conduct, of buying methamphetamine, and of lying.
• This page does not state the amount of Haggard's severance from New Life Church, or the amount of the 2009 settlement. Reported figures varied and no authoritative public record of them exists.
• This page does not resolve the disagreement between New Life Church's 2009 disclosure and Haggard's partial acknowledgement of that matter. The two accounts differ and neither was adjudicated.
• This page does not reach any conclusion about the 2022 allegations made by former members of St. James Church. They were reported in the press, Haggard denied wrongdoing, and no charge or published finding is known here.
• This page does not report developments after mid-2026 and does not track the current state of St. James Church, New Life Church, or Ted Haggard's ministry.
• This page makes no statement about Ted Haggard's sexual orientation beyond describing statements that he and others made publicly, and it draws no conclusion about his standing before God. That judgment belongs to God alone.

The Catholic Response

The Catholic response to a case like this runs along four lines: what a fallen minister does to the sacraments, what repentance is and what it does not automatically restore, why accountability has to be structural, and how a Catholic can write about this without pretending to a clean record.

The minister's sin does not void the sacrament

One of the oldest questions in Christian history is whether the ministry of an unworthy minister is worthless. The Donatist controversy in North Africa turned on exactly that, and the Church rejected the Donatist position. The Catechism states the settled teaching: the sacraments act by the power of God, so that their effect does not depend on the personal holiness of the minister, and the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of the celebrant or of the recipient (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1128). A baptism performed by a man who was living a double life is a real baptism.

That teaching has an obvious pastoral use here. People who were converted, married or comforted under Haggard's ministry are sometimes told, or tell themselves, that it was all worthless because of what he was doing privately. Catholic teaching says otherwise. God is the one who acts, and He is not held hostage by the failure of the man He works through.

Repentance forgives sin and does not automatically restore office

Catholic teaching on penance is straightforward. Grave sin is forgiven through contrition, confession, and absolution given by a priest with the authority to grant it (CCC 1440 to 1449), and there is no sin so grave that the Church cannot forgive it (CCC 982). Our page on the sacrament of confession and how it works sets out the mechanics.

Restoration to public ministry is a separate question and the Church has always treated it as separate. Scripture attaches conditions to the office of overseer that go beyond the state of a man's soul: he must be above reproach, well thought of by outsiders, temperate, and not a recent convert (1 Timothy 3:2 to 7). A man can be genuinely forgiven and still be unfit to hold a pulpit, because the requirements for the office concern the credibility of the office as well as the state of the man. Catholic practice reflects this. A cleric can be removed from ministry, or barred from public ministry permanently, without any suggestion that his sins are unforgiven.

Much of the American evangelical argument about Haggard's return to ministry in 2010 was really an argument about this distinction, conducted without agreed terms for it. The usual objection concerned the pulpit rather than forgiveness. Its claim was that forgiveness leaves open the separate question of whether a man returns to public ministry. That is the traditional position and it is worth stating clearly.

Accountability has to be structural

Haggard founded his own congregation, shaped its culture over more than twenty years, and held its senior office and a national office at the same time. The overseers who eventually removed him were an outside body, and the fact that they existed at all is why the removal happened quickly. That structure did its work at the end. It plainly did not prevent what led up to it.

Scripture is blunt about the risk of the teaching office. James warns that not many should become teachers, since those who teach will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1). Paul warns that anyone who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12). The Catechism treats scandal, the behaviour that leads another into evil, as a grave offence, and treats it as more serious when committed by those with authority over others (CCC 2284 to 2285). None of this depends on unusual doctrine. It is the ordinary teaching about ordinary human weakness, applied to men in positions where weakness does the most damage.

The practical form of that teaching is structural. Finances open to outside audit, discipline exercised by people the leader did not appoint, teaching answerable to a standard the leader did not write. A framework for recognizing where those safeguards are missing, including the standard warning signs and the difference between a demanding church and a controlling one, is set out on our page comparing cults and Christianity. In one sentence: the danger sign is a human leader who takes the place that belongs to God and to conscience. This page does not re-argue that framework. Haggard's case is a case of a large amount of authority collecting in one man who was answerable mostly to people he had chosen, which is a different problem from the ones that framework treats.

A Catholic has no height to write from

The Catholic Church has its own record on exactly this subject, and it is worse. The abuse crisis in Catholic institutions involved the same mechanism operating over a longer period and on a larger scale: authority treated as beyond question, complaints handled internally, reputation weighed against the harmed. We address that record directly on our page about scandals in the Church. A Catholic account of Ted Haggard that carried any note of superiority would be dishonest, and the point of examining his case is not to score against evangelicals.

The useful comparison runs the other way. New Life Church published a conclusion within a week and removed its founder. That is a standard many Catholic dioceses failed to meet for decades. Where a non-Catholic body did the right thing faster, saying so is simply accurate.

Testing those who teach

Scripture gives a test rather than a rule of deference. Jesus warned about false prophets and said they are known by their fruits (Matthew 7:15 to 16). John tells believers to test the spirits, because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). Paul tells the Thessalonians to test everything and hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Our pages on false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing work through those tests in detail.

Applying them to this case requires care. Haggard was not teaching false doctrine, and the fruit test is not a licence to declare a man a wolf on the basis of his private sins. Paul's instruction about a brother caught in a transgression is to restore him in a spirit of gentleness, while watching yourself lest you also be tempted (Galatians 6:1). The Christian posture toward a fallen minister includes both the removal from office and the desire for his repentance, and holding those two together is the difficulty.

For people who left

A leader's fall drives people out of church, sometimes permanently. The reasoning is understandable: if the man who taught me was living a lie, the whole thing may be a lie. Catholic teaching answers that directly through CCC 1128. The faith does not rest on the character of the man who handed it to you. Our page on why people leave the Church and what brings them back deals with that experience at length.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What did Ted Haggard actually admit in 2006?

Ted Haggard admitted buying methamphetamine from Mike Jones and said he threw it away without using it. He admitted receiving a massage from Jones. In a letter read to New Life Church on Sunday, 5 November 2006, he called himself a deceiver and a liar and described a part of his life he said he had fought against for his whole adult life. He accepted the finding of the church's overseers that he was guilty of sexually immoral conduct. He did not publicly confirm the specifics of Jones's account of a paid sexual relationship lasting about three years, and he denied parts of it in his first responses.

Was Ted Haggard ever charged with a crime?

No criminal charges against Ted Haggard were reported to have arisen from the 2006 allegations. He admitted buying methamphetamine and was not prosecuted for it. The consequences he faced were the loss of his pulpit at New Life Church and the loss of the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals, which are church and organizational decisions rather than legal ones.

Who is Mike Jones and why is he named on this page?

Mike Jones is the Denver man who made the 2006 allegations. He is named here because he came forward publicly under his own name, gave on-the-record interviews to Denver media, and later published a book about the episode. He said he acted because Haggard was publicly supporting a Colorado ballot measure defining marriage as between one man and one woman while, in Jones's account, privately paying him for sex.

Did Ted Haggard go back into ministry?

Yes. After leaving Colorado under an agreement with New Life Church and spending several years in Arizona, Haggard returned to Colorado Springs and in 2010 started a new congregation called St. James Church, which began meeting on his own property. He remained a public figure through documentaries, interviews and television appearances. This page does not track the current state of that church or of his ministry.

What does the Catholic Church teach about a minister who sins?

Catholic teaching holds that the effect of a sacrament does not depend on the holiness of the minister, because the sacrament acts by the power of God rather than by the righteousness of the celebrant or the recipient (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1128). The Church also teaches that grave sin is forgiven through repentance and sacramental confession (CCC 1440 to 1449). Forgiveness of sin and fitness for public office are separate questions, and the Church can and does remove a man from ministry whose sin has been forgiven.

What is the lesson of the Ted Haggard case for ordinary churchgoers?

The practical lesson concerns structure rather than personality. Haggard founded his own church, built its culture, and held its highest office and a national office at the same time, and the people who could discipline him were largely people he had chosen. Scripture warns that teachers are judged more strictly (James 3:1) and that anyone who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12). A congregation is safer when finances, discipline and teaching are open to review by people the leader does not control.