Ted Haggard's Cash-For-Heaven Offer

Colorado Confidential:

Have some extra cash? Feel like going to heaven? Then you might consider sending Ted Haggard and his family some monthly checks for the next two years while they move into a halfway house and get psychology and counseling degrees from the University of Phoenix.

If you haven't had enough of the Haggard/New Life Church saga, this week KRDO Channel 13 in Colorado Springs aired a story about a letter that Haggard sent to consumer reporter Tak Landrock, letting him know of the Haggard family plans to move into the Phoenix Dream Center to minister to ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and "other broken people," Haggard writes. "I identify."

Baaron Pittenger, assistant news director of the ABC affiliate, says that Landrock has been communicating with the fallen former pastor of New Life Church via e-mail. The station broadcast the story about Haggard's new life and request for donations on the 10 p.m. news last night. Pittenger says he's not aware that there's been much response to the story.

Haggard, the charismatic former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was fired last Nov. 4 from the 14,000-member New Life Church that he founded after he admitted buying meth and getting massages from a male escort. After three weeks of intensive "restoration" therapy, Haggard claimed he was "completely heterosexual"; he and his family subsequently moved to Arizona.

In his most recent communiqué with the Colorado Springs TV reporter, Haggard indicates that he and his wife Gayle, along with their two underage younger sons, are planning to move into a one-bedroom apartment in a Phoenix halfway house to minister to the residents. They are both, he wrote, enrolled at the University of Phoenix.

In what is clearly a fundraising letter, Haggard indicated, "we need to raise our own support." However, he doesn't mention that when he left the church, New Life Church leaders agreed to pay his salary through 2007 - estimated at about $138,000 annually.

In addition, as Colorado Confidential reported earlier this month, El Paso County Assessor property records show that the Haggard's still own their 5-bedroom, 3-bath home in Colorado Springs. Sitting on 5.1 acres, its current market value is listed at $715,051.

The home is not currently on the market for sale.

LSB: Isn't the University of Phoenix just an ONLINE diploma mill? Is there a reason (other than to get out of town) for the Haggard clan to move to Phoenix to attend this "school" since the website for the University of Phoenix lists two campuses for classes in Colorado? Is this alleged move to a one-bedroom apartment in Phoenix legit, or is this "move" a ruse for those poor souls assuming Ted and his wife are actually attending classes at a university in Phoenix, AZ? Color me cynical, but this is another sorry tactic by yet another money-grubbing charlatan to take advantage of the goodness of those they supposedly were serving. Men like Haggard give Christianity a bad name!

UPDATE: In a handy bit of sleuthing, a blog team at the Stranger in Seattle has followed up this story with some interesting info about the organization that Haggard is asking people to send money to, Families With a Mission.

An independent confirmation with the Colorado Secretary of State's office shows that the organization's corporate offices were moved from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii to the Town of Monument, north of Colorado Springs, in July, 2003.

Its Colorado Springs mailing address is the same one to which Haggard is asking people to send donations. However, Secretary of State records show that Families With a Mission was administratively dissolved earlier this year, on Feb. 23.

And the man who is listed as the president of Families With a Mission, Paul Gerard Huberty, appears to be the same Paul Huberty who was convicted in 1996 of having sex with a 17-year old girl while he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force stationed in Germany, and who later registered as a sex offender in Hawaii. The organization Family Watchdog, which tracks sex offenders, currently lists Huberty at the same Monument address that was the principal address of Families With a Mission.
LSB: Oh, Ted, as Ricky would say to Lucy, "You got some esplainin' to do!"