If Haggard Strays, His Team Will Know

If Haggard strays, his team will know

Counselors to monitor fallen pastors progress; regimen may include 12-step, family meetings

By Deedee Correll, The Gazette,(Colorado Springs, Colorado), November 19, 2006

The rehabilitation of the Rev. Ted Haggard will look a lot like parole.

It might not include urine tests or ankle bracelets, but he’ll be tracked all the same. He’ll have to keep appointments, work on issues and constantly answer to other people.

With one difference.

"He can stop at any time. A guy on parole can’t stop," said H.B. London of Focus on the Family, who will step in for his cousin, James Dobson, as a member of Haggard’s restoration team.

London, appointed to the team last week, said he doesn’t yet know exactly what the job of helping the former pastor of New Life Church in his spiritual recovery will entail.

But over the years, London said he has participated in scores of such restorations -- with people including a pastor who stole church funds, a minister who discovered Internet pornography to his liking and a minister caught plagiarizing a sermon.

That’s usually how it starts, London said. Like Haggard -- whose associations with methamphetamines and a male prostitute became public when a Denver man revealed them Nov. 1 -- most pastors don’t report their own sins.

They get exposed.

But once it’s in the open, some opt for a path that could lead them back to their church.

"The end goal is to have that person healthy again," said Tom Pedigo, a Colorado Springs man who wrote a manual on restoration after losing his own ministry for marital infidelity.

Success won’t necessarily return them to the pulpit, but that isn’t the point, London said. "It’s not so much getting back into ministry that concerns me as seeing them live in peace," he said. "I want to see the person happy again."

Although the restoration process varies from church to church, it always starts with a confession, London said. "There’s no way to begin the healing process unless they’re willing to admit they need to be healed," he said.

A member of New Life’s overseer board, the Rev. Larry Stockstill, said Haggard will then undergo a polygraph test to help the team gauge how honest he is being.

The next step, London said, is establishing a treatment -- what the pastor will do and how often. That can include daily prayers, Bible study, going to church a certain number of times per week and meeting with the team every 10 days for a progress check.

"We talk about your attitude," London said. "A lot of times, there’s anger. We don’t want to see them walking around with a chip on their shoulder all the time."

If the transgression stemmed from an addiction, the team might require professional therapy or membership in a 12-step group, London said.

It also will require family meetings to "deal with hurts and resentments," London said.

It’s not known whether Haggard’s restoration will include "reparative therapy" aimed at overcoming same-sex attraction.

So far, Haggard has admitted publicly to receiving massages from Mike Jones, a former male escort from Denver, buying illegal drugs and "sexual immorality." If the team learns Haggard had sex with Jones, as the escort says, it could require him to undergo counseling to change his sexual orientation.

Proponents of the therapy believe a variety of factors can play a role in sexual orientation, said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, a network of ministries advocating "freedom from homosexuality" through Christian faith.

"I would never say there isn’t a biological component," he said. "But just because it’s genetic doesn’t make it healthy or right."

Studies suggest such techniques are successful about 30 percent of the time, he said. He also said Exodus gets about 400,000 contacts and it refers people to various programs.

The American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association both say homosexuality is not a mental disorder and does not warrant a cure.

"There is no legitimate basis for trying to change a person’s sexual orientation," said Doug Haldeman, a member of the board of directors for the American Psychological Association. "It really is just a function of social prejudices."

"Whatever it is he’s going through to restore him to good standing, it’s important to ask, ‘Why is he going through this at all?’" Haldeman said of Haggard.

Cherie Estelow, a former New Life member, said she has experienced the church’s attempts to eradicate her homosexuality.

Estelow said she always realized she was gay but tried to suppress those feelings. For a year, she met with a counselor at New Life for weekly sessions in which they examined the possible sources of her sexual orientation.

She said the counselor repeatedly asked if she’d ever suffered sexual abuse. When Estelow said she hadn’t, the counselor suggested she’d blocked it out.

"It did get to the point where it did seem goofy," she said.

Finally, she said, the counselor recommended an exorcism. Estelow was skeptical but agreed.

During the ceremony, she sat in a chair while 10 people prayed in tongues, sometimes breaking into English as they ordered Satan out of her.

"I was praying as well: ‘If there’s something inside me you find offensive, remove it,’" she said. "I left the same person I walked in as. You can’t exorcise me out of me."

She decided God didn’t want her to change.

And Haggard shouldn’t have to change fundamentally, she said. "If you have to work that hard to make a person not gay, why are you doing it?" Estelow said. "There’s nothing wrong with it. Why are you trying to change that?"

She said she fears the process will breed depression in Haggard.

Depression often descends upon fallen ministers, said London and Pedigo, although they attribute it to different causes.

Not only has the person been shamed, he’s lost his job and must find a way to support his family, all while meeting the requirements of his healers, Pedigo said.

Pedigo said he had been a Baptist minister for 21 years in Michigan before he resigned in 1992 after cheating on his wife. He said his rehabilitation consisted of weekly meetings, 12-step groups and professional therapy.

He became depressed. "I had lost my calling. I was on my own," Pedigo said.

After two years, he said, he was declared healed -- a decision made partly because his wife affirmed he had changed. He was reordained but decided not to return to the pulpit on a regular basis. He’s state director of the American Family Association and runs Winning Edge Ministry, which works to restore ministers.

Gauging when the job is done is the hardest part, Pedigo and London said.

"It’s not like when a doctor comes in and says, ‘You’re cancer-free.’ It’s an evolving thing," London said. "This is a process of several years before you can stamp ‘healed’ across the file."

For some, that never happens. "If it’s an addictive personality, the process is ongoing," London said. "There’s never really healing."

London said in his experience, the process can take from three to seven years, but he wouldn’t speculate on a timetable for Haggard. "When will he be done? That’s a question we’ll have to answer later," he said. London said he’s glad to be a part of Haggard’s rehab. "Honored and humbled," he said. "And anxious about the process."

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