I’m a preacher’s kid so the workings of churches have a special fascination for me. That’s how I happened to be reading an article about New Life Church in Colorado Springs and their search for a new pastor.
They’ve been hunting for a pastor since their founding pastor, Ted Haggard, was fired in November after admitting to an affair with a male prostitute that included drug use. That story was covered by all the major news outlets because Haggard had been a vocal advocate of “family values.”
As I was reading the article, one sentence jumped out at me. “Ware told the crowd that he was impressed by Boyd’s integrity and especially by two of his responses during the detailed selection process that included background checks.”
Background checks for pastors? Wow. I guess the world has changed a lot since I was a kid.
A background check wouldn’t have prevented the church’s problems with Mr. Haggard. Although prostitution is illegal in most states, and drug use certainly is, the behavior that got him in trouble happened after he was already in a position of trust.
Still, if you’re a church, you want to do everything you can to avoid the kind of embarrassment and anguish that New Life Church went through. And if you’re not a church, you still want to do everything you can to make sure that no one you hire winds up on the front page of the paper for a bad reason.