COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. ? Before the elders began explaining to the congregation at New Life Church why its founder wasn’t there Sunday, the youngsters were sent out of the room.

Some in the standing-room-only crowd in the megachurch’s 8,000-seat auditorium wiped away tears and embraced each other as they heard the Rev. Ted Haggard’s remorseful confession of “sexual immorality,” read by a member of the board that fired him a day earlier.

“I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life,” wrote Haggard, who resigned last week as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 30 million evangelical Christians.

Brought low by a man who last week said Haggard paid him for sex and used methamphetamine, Haggard has not changed his version of events – that he received a massage from the man, Mike Jones of Denver, who is gay, and bought drugs but threw them away.

His letter did not directly address the details. “The accusations that have been leveled against me are not all true, but enough of them are true that I have been appropriately and lovingly removed from the ministry,” he wrote.

Haggard asked for forgiveness for himself and for his accuser – a plea many accepted with open arms.

Naomi Robb, right, and other members of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., pray during church services Sunday after hearing a letter read in which the founder and pastor the Rev. Ted Haggard confessed to his followers that he was guilty of sexual immorality.

After services, Patty Erwin was on her knees near the back of the auditorium, and her first prayer was for Haggard.

“We all love him because he’s a part of our family. You don’t just throw away a sister or a brother,” said Erwin, who’s been coming to the 14,000-member church for 15 years. “Desperately, we love him, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.”

In another letter read to the congregation, Haggard’s wife, Gayle, promised to remain with her husband.

“My test has begun; watch me. I will try to prove myself faithful,” she wrote.

The Rev. Larry Stockstill, senior pastor of Bethany World Prayer Center in Baker, La., and the Overseer Board member who read the Haggards’ letters, said Haggard had been more open to his dark side because he was stretched thin by the demands of his pastoral work and his national profile. But he said no one is without sin and it’s better to acknowledge it than try to hide it, adding that exposing Haggard’s sin could help make people more aware of that.

“We can be angry at God and say the timing is terrible or we can say ‘Blessed be His name’,” said Stockstill, echoing a line from a hymn sung earlier in the service.

Haggard said he will never return to leadership at the church and will be working with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, a psychologist, as well as pastors Jack Hayford and Tommy Barnett on a healing and restoration plan for him, his marriage and family.