Posted on 12/19/2006 1:57:15 PM PST by Alex Murphy
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- A pastor who worked with young adults at New Life Church has admitted sexual misconduct and resigned just weeks after former church leader Ted Haggard stepped down over sexual immorality.
Christopher Beard, who headed the "twentyfourseven" ministry that taught leadership skills to young adults, resigned Friday, said Rob Brendle, an associate pastor at the 14,000-member church.
Brendle said Beard told church officials about "a series of decisions displaying poor judgment, including one incident of sexual misconduct several years ago."
The church said in a statement that the misconduct was with another unmarried adult several years ago. Beard, who worked at the church for nine years, has since married.
Brendle would not elaborate about the nature of the misconduct but said it did not involve Haggard, who acknowledged he paid a man for a massage and for methamphetamine but said he did not have sex with the man and did not use the drug.
Beard's resignation was first reported Monday by The Denver Post and The Gazette in Colorado Springs. The church said it wouldn't comment further. A residential phone number listed in Beard's name was disconnected.
The church's outside Board of Overseers was asked to examine the "spiritual character" of its 200 staff members after Haggard resigned last month from the church and as president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
"We recognize there will be increased scrutiny of our church in the wake of the scandal," Brendle said.
He said Beard discussed his "misconduct" during a meeting with the Board of Overseers, made up of four pastors from other congregations.
Beard was reprimanded by the church in 2002, when police broke up a twentyfourseven training exercise he led in a church parking lot involving fake assault rifles.
Haggard and his wife, Gayle Haggard, are undergoing three weeks of counseling at an undisclosed center in Arizona.
Sad
Sounds to me like these people are long on show, but they are short on actions.
200 staff members?! Some churches are just too darned big for their own (and their members') good.
Three weeks! That should fix whatever's broken.
William Ted Frank, Over
Hey, you never know when a church is going to have to establish its own special ops team.
Maybe they think Jesus really meant, "If they reject thy Purpose-Driven Megachurch, shake the dust from thy sandals, call in artillery and air strikes on their heathen a$$es, and use fire and maneuver to send the survivors off to meet Beezlbub."
Me too
The plasticity and arrogance of some Evangelicals goes along way to turning people off about them.
St. Francis of Assisi said it best, to paraphrase, that the best Christians are the ones who are short on their words and long on their actions. The look at me I'm a Christian crap is the stuff that Jesus warned about when he said not to be like the hypocrites.
Yep, although I'll have to admit guilt in this also. Some of us just aren't called to leadership no matter how much we want to be and it sux to learn this the hard way.
It is not how high the Pentecostal preachers can jump, it is how straight they can walk when they get down.
I defer to the wisdom of the 5th century Desert Fathers who eschewed the world to be close to God in the Egyptian deserts.
A young Abbot was counseled thus, in our own day, by a holy man: “Today many people, wishing for an excuse not to do what God asks of them, find fault with the teaching of the Holy Church and reject correct Christian belief. Instead, they choose to believe what they wish. This is akin to a man not wishing to believe that he will die, simply because the notion does not comfort him. Not only will he fail to prepare for death, as one ought to do, but he will inevitably find himself in the snare of death. Correct belief is not based on what we wish were true, but on Truth itself.”
Unlike the arrogance of people who call others names and smugly enjoy others personal failure, that attitude will win many converts to your church.
I think that Roman Catholics would be wise to avoid throwing stones about errant clergy engaging in homosexual acts. It has bankrupted many of your dioceses.
Spare me your tu quoque logic.
The Catholic Church has its problems, but my experience of Evangelicalism before I converted showed me its shallowness. My experience was that it's largely about feelings rather than reason. And it's more about the individual pastor in these megachurches. Rod Parsley, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, etc.
I have no reason to defend errant priests, after all St. John Chrysostom said, in the 5th century, that the floor of hell was lined with the skulls of errant ones. At least we can be self critical.
I am confident the Catholic Church will right-side itself in the coming years and decades. The Church has survived Arianism, the Roman Empire, Napoleon, Atilla the Hun and the Protestant Revolution, so it will survive this as well.
Spare me your tu quoque logic.
The Catholic Church has its problems, but my experience of Evangelicalism before I converted showed me its shallowness. My experience was that it's largely about feelings rather than reason. The individual pastor in these megachurches than a. Rod Parsley, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, etc., often overshadow Christ, and the Evangelical doctrine of salvation in an instant and eternal security is the height of arrogance. Apostates frequently pretend to be the most pious of them all. Feeling saved doesn't equal being saved.
I have no reason to defend errant priests, after all St. John Chrysostom said, in the 5th century, that the floor of hell was lined with the skulls of errant ones. At least we can be self critical.
I am confident the Catholic Church will right-side itself in the coming years and decades. The Church has survived Arianism, the Roman Empire, Napoleon, Atilla the Hun and the Protestant Revolution, so it will survive this as well.
I haven't heard the recent numbers, but I'll bet that it's nowhere near 14,000 members anymore.
First Haggard and now Beard...hmmmm.
Me thinks the "spiritual characteer" of the so-called "overseers" should be examined after their apparent failure to "oversee" Ted, et al.
Uh...are you also a member of New Life?
Even through the pain of errant priests and dioceses in financial struggles because of it, there are still many converts coming into the Church. Each year in my diocese alone, there are anywhere between 2,000-3,000 people who enter the Church at Easter time.
And the number of young men entering seminaries has begun to increase, and a number of new and healthy communities of religious siters have appeared.
The burdens we carry from our brother's sins and the Faith that sustains us through it all will be our oiled lamps in the years to come.
Wishing all a Blessed Christmas.
ROE
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