The Melchisedeck Team Real Estate and New Life Church
My Experience with the Melchisedeck Team
By Brian Karjala
In the past on this website I had detailed my unfortunate encounters with some members of Ted Haggard's New Life Church. I've wanted to forget all about these people but considering that they are still active in my community I've decided to once again issue a fair warning to those persons who can benefit from it.
This writing will focus primarily on some members of a real estate business known as The Melchisedeck Team (or the Mel Team). The late Dixie Melchisedeck started the business and later partnered with her husband Jerry Melchisedeck Sr. after he retired from the Air Force. It was my association with their son Jerry Jr. (who today owns the business) that I will write about in part to draw attention to the negative influence of the disgraced former New Life pastor Ted Haggard upon his life.
I first attended New Life in the fall of 1991 and later met Jerry Jr. in January 1994 at the New Life college group which at the time was held at the youth pastor's house. It was the second college meeting I had attended when I first got acquainted with Jerry who was filling in as a guest college leader for the youth pastor Chris Hodges. Me and Jerry talked for a little while before the group started and we discovered that we both attended the same high school (he graduated four years before me). He seemed interested in getting to know me and I thought the conversation went well.
But just before the meeting began Jerry's behavior became very strange. He started laughing uncontrollably and was making jokes about my quiet personality. He would make a joke and then turn his head to the side and squeal with laughter (a high pitched squeal). Then he would look back at me, make another joke about my personality and then turn his head again and squeal. As he was doing this he was bouncing up and down as he was taking his seat.
I was being mocked. But what was happening did not make any sense to me. One moment Jerry was calm and friendly with me and only a few minutes later he was hyperactive and seemed to be insulting me. I couldn't understand the contradiction. Jerry saw my puzzled look and then composed himself a bit and with a smirk on his face said something to the effect of,"You don't mind me saying these things, do you?" I had waited months for the college group to start up and wanted it to work out so in my easy-going nature I brushed off his remarks.
I couldn't understand what he found so funny about my quiet personality. Is he a lunatic? I suppose I must have stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the arrogant loud-mouth jerks who dominated that church. A short time later at that college group Jerry's mentor Chris Hodges in an opening speech to the group made some disparaging remarks against those of us with quiet personalities. (I wouldn't tolerate that kind of disrespect for even one second today. These people wear their prejudice on their sleeves. In retrospect I can tell you that these evildoers actually hate what is genuine.) But thereafter almost each and every Friday night over the next year-and-a-half I would interact with Jerry. (And by April 1994 the metrosexual Chris Hodges was replaced with ORU graduates John and Sarah Bolin.)
In the mid-1990s Jerry and myself were subscribers to the Prodigy internet service. Jerry read my Christian posts on a bulletin board and became belligerent toward me. In my postings I would occasionally quote from Scripture. Jerry said that by quoting Scripture I was being "unloving." I explained to him that the opposite was true. (I had once communicated to a non-Christian on Prodigy who was not aware that my writings were based on the Bible so I made it a practice to document my writings with Scripture.) But my Scriptural references made Jerry hostile toward me. One time me and Jerry were in a chat room together and I was discussing Scripture verses with some other individuals. Jerry became furious and told me to "shut up." This from a guy who would use the internet to intentionally confuse and toy with people for his own self amusement.
When Jerry would see me at the Friday night group he would smooth things over with me and make sure that we were alright with one another. In my kind and agreeable nature I would let him know that everything was fine (though I did not understand his rude behavior). It wasn't until some time later that I realized that Jerry's behavior was reflective of New Life's "evangelistic" outreach practices. New Life will use food and entertainment to attract people to the church. A shallow entertainment-driven church such as New Life does not build upon its membership by advertising doctrinal positions. Even though my conversations with others were always friendly I was viewed as "unloving" because I took a stand for truth at a church where members like Jerry are very compromising when it comes to speaking absolutes to sinners. In their fear of offending the world they demonstrated that they were one with the world.
New Life pastor Ted Haggard would downplay the problem of sin (see Ted Haggard's "Easy Christianity") though this hypocrite did make it a point to condemn homosexuality every chance he could while he was secretly practicing the sin. The hypocrisy and worldly atmosphere at New Life did not allow the Holy Spirit to convict individuals of their sins which is why there has been an abundance of sexual and financial misdeeds and crimes reported at that cesspool. In a 2005 Denver Post article Ted Haggard summed up the spiritual climate at his church when he said that some Colorado Springs residents "probably do march in the gay-pride parade and then come to New Life Church. Welcome to America."
From the very beginning I felt uncomfortable at New Life.
One of my first clues that something was wrong with Jerry surfaced the night I met him. His love of our high school was an immediate red flag. A genuine Christian does not excel within such an ungodly environment in the way that Jerry did (popularity wise). I hated that Air Academy high school (a public high school located on the grounds of the Air Force Academy). There were a number of hateful yelling and violent stand-offs that came against me on a regular basis there (I did absolutely nothing to provoke any of it).
About a month after I moved to Colorado (in Sept. '91) I had a gun pulled on me by three teenage guys who confronted me in a Rockrimmon neighborhood I was riding my bicycle through on a Friday evening. It was a power-play. First the ringleader said he wouldn't even use weapons (and threw a pocket knife on the ground for dramatics). But when I showed no fear that's when the gun came out and two of the punks were saying, "Shoot him!" I still showed no fear and then they decided that they didn't want to fight me (or kill me) anymore.
That encounter angered me so badly I couldn't even smile for about a week afterwards. The gleeful delinquent smirks on their faces made me furious (and they were wearing their Air Academy attire). Years later I would see that same smirk on Jerry's face when I caught him laughing about the pain and misfortune of others.
I could sense the gloomy spirit at that high school. When I was a senior (1992-93) there were two other seniors that year who died violent deaths... which at the time was a very rare phenomenon in Colorado (I didn't know either one of them; neither of the students were in any of my classes). One young man, Jeremy King, committed suicide, and a short time later a punk named Carmine Tagliere tried to kill someone on the freeway and ended up getting himself killed. That morning (in April '93) I tried to drive my car onto the north I-25 freeway entrance from the Woodmen onramp but couldn't because it was blocked by a police car. (Read the account of Carmine's shooter, Vern Smalley.)
[Work in progress. More to come later...]
As I take a break from telling this story (it's a very unpleasant subject for me) there is another individual working for the Mel Team who needs to be addressed. A partner of the Melchisedecks is Coleman Jarrell. The one encounter I had with this smart-mouth little weasel of a man-boy still boils my blood in anger when I think about it. Coleman was for some time a staff member at New Life and had a large personal office at the church. The condescending hate and ridicule this little punk exhibited toward me (when he found out I was suffering from depression) was pretty much the end of my involvement with New Life. Less than a few weeks after meeting the man I attended the David Hogan service and that was it for me.
A quick point. Coleman was on staff around the time a New Life pedophile pastor by the name of Steve Evans was convicted of sexual abuse. New Life staff hid the information of this crime from the public and I believe it is reasonable to assume that Coleman was and still is a part of this cover-up. Likewise, it is also my belief that the New Life elder Jerry Sr. would certainly have known about this cover-up (and by extension his son Jerry Jr. would also know).
Here's the truth. Ted Haggard recruited fellow sexual deviants to "serve" at his church. The music director Ross Parsley was even more effeminate than Haggard. When I first saw Coleman I was puzzled as to why so many of the staff members resembled Haggard in physical stature and attitude. To be completely honest, Coleman's characteristics struck me as being similar to what I associate with militant homosexuals (wimpy physique, testy personality & close association with Haggard).
When I first saw Haggard in 1991 the word that flashed in my mind was 'homosexual.' I thought I was being unfairly critical of the man so I suppressed my instincts and discernment. ("Maybe he's just a sissy who wants to serve God.") At the time I couldn't believe that a homosexual would want to pastor a church that condemned homosexuals. It didn't make any sense to me. In my innocent nature I couldn't believe that the senior pastor at the church I attended would want to live such a horrible lie.
I under-estimated the power of evil. Today I have the understanding that perverts like Haggard get a thrill out of condemning the sins they love the most. Haggard also loved to inject the word 'masterbate' into his sermons (which prompted his impressionable and classless disciple Jerry Jr. to sometimes work that same word into his conversations with me).
(Photo: 2009)
Long-time Ted Haggard disciple Jerry
Melchisedeck, Jr. displays a satanic hand sign
(signs of satan)
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