(RNS) — Pastor Brady Boyd, who helped one of the country’s biggest evangelical congregations recover from the Ted Haggard scandal and an attack by a gunman in the early 2000s, has resigned from the Colorado megachurch.
Church elders at New Life Church in Colorado Springs said Boyd, its senior pastor, misled the congregation about his knowledge of sexual abuse by his friend and mentor Robert Morris.
“When Brady recently told our congregation inaccurately that he was unaware of certain details regarding Morris’ past abuse, trust was broken, and the elders asked Brady to resign,” church elder Scott Palmer said in a statement read during a service on Sunday (June 22). Boyd resigned last week.
Boyd became pastor of New Life in 2007, months after Haggard, who was then an adviser to President George W. Bush and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned from the church in a sex scandal. Before that year was out, a gunman opened fire at the church, killing two people and wounding several others. The gunman had also previously attacked a missionary training center.
In their statement, the New Life elders told the congregation that Boyd had helped the church recover from tragedy.
“Brady’s steady hand of leadership helped the church through extremely dark times into a long season of peace,” Palmer said, reading from a statement.
The elders also announced that Daniel Grothe had been named the church’s new pastor and that a succession plan had already been in place.
Before becoming a pastor at New Life, which draws 15,000 people to services, Boyd had been on the staff from 2001 to 2007 at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, where Morris was the longtime pastor. When Boyd came to New Life, he made Morris part of a board that oversaw the Colorado church.
Pastor Robert Morris applauds during a roundtable discussion at the Gateway Church Dallas campus, June 11, 2020, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Morris, a former spi …