Scott Douglas Vaughan

Me and Vicki Saturday, Aug. 16, 1986 Wedding Anniversaries are important. Don't take them lightly. Vicki and I celebrate our 32nd Anniversary this week on Thursday, Aug. 16. There's nothing particularly significant about No. 32, but we will still press the pause button of our lives and spend a couple of days together. Vicki is adamant that we celebrate our anniversary on Aug. 16 each year - our actual Wedding date. It doesn't matter if it's a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a Thursday. We celebrate the day - we even celebrate the time on the day (the service began at 7:30 p.m.). Here's why Wedding Anniversaries (even No. 32) are important and deserving of recognition. 1. There's something supernatural at work. For Jesus followers, like Vicki and me, marriage goes all the way back to the beginning of time. It was breathed into existence by God, who saw that man needed a partner (woman) and created her. This partner wasn't to walk in front of or behind ...

Me, center, and Stuart Collins, right with the Mayor of Covington, GA in November 1976 The Lord has been good to me. He has blessed my life with friends who have known me since the cradle, Kindergarten, and a shared hometown. I've also lived in five different cities and towns, and He's blessed my life with great friends made during those stops. He's also blessed my life with people who came and went just for a quick season - a blink in time. Stuart Collins was one of the latter - here today and gone tomorrow - but make no mistake about it. He was my friend. You would have loved him. I met Stuart Collins in the Spring of 1975. We were both selected to serve as regional lieutenant governors for the Georgia Key Club organization. Key Club was a high school service organization sponsored by local Kiwanis clubs. At the time, both Key Club and Kiwanis Club were all-male. As state lieutenant governors, I represented a region in north Georgia; Stuart represented a regio...

Hickory Trail's cover alongside copies of Brookwood Road and Elm Street In late October, I am going to publish my third and final book in the Memories of a Home series. The book, Hickory Trail, continues the story of main character Frank Wilcox and the Wilcox family. In Brookwood Road (2014), Frank and his brothers Jack and Wayne grow up on the family hog farm in south Acorn County in north Georgia during the 1960s and 1970s. The book ends with the family leaving the farm, moving 10 miles north to a subdivision in the town of Acorn. The move coincides with Frank entering high school. In Elm Street (2016), readers follow Frank and his close friends through the first eight years of school at the Acorn Primary and Junior High schools. Many of Frank's closest friends were his friends from birth, through church, and Kindergarten. It's a book of friendship and adventure. Hickory Trail will follow Frank through four years of high school, working at the local newspaper,...

When our four boys were little boys, Vicki creatively interviewed them each Father's Day weekend and then gave me the videotape as a gift. Each of my sons was individually asked a series of questions about me, and they answered the questions while the other brothers heckled them from off camera. This past Father's Day, we watched those tapes. One year Vicki asked, "What's the craziest thing your daddy has done this year?" The older three answered, "He wore underwear on his head." It was clean underwear. The underwear story unfolded on a hot June afternoon. I had taken off from work and decided to spend all day with my boys. We watched television, played outside, and cooked lunch together. I made them sit through an episode of Bonanza - I still think every boy should be a Bonanza fan whether they want to be or not. An afternoon thunderstorm forced us to get creative inside the house. We positioned an empty, round laundry basket on one end of the...

Richard, William, Andrew & Matthew (Andrew & Elizabeth's Wedding -  Dec. 2015) There's no preamble for this week's entry. My Vicki and I have raised four boys to the age of 21. This Sunday is my 30th Father's Day. Dads: 1. Love Jesus and join His church every Sunday . Get your hands dirty in ministry. 2. Model the marriage you pray your boys will have. Deeply love their mama. 3. Respect your own parents. Speak well of them. 4. Make communication a priority in your family. Kill the communication; kill the relationship. 5. Set high expectations for your sons. We get what we expect out of people. 6. Don't be a dream killer. Let them live big and wide and far. Let them fly. 7. Teach them to respect money, but not worship it. Model contentment. 8. Encourage your sons to read. Reading equals learning; ignorant people first ignore reading. 9. Have the balls to say "No" even if every other misguided dad is saying "Yes." ...

I stood in the prairie grass, breathed deep, and just stared at Montana's wide open spaces. The sun was beginning to set and it was like God had personally hand-painted the sky down to where it met those wide open spaces. It was like heaven to me. Then one of my boys farted. In August 2001, I spoke to a small gathering of Baptist pastors and church leaders at the Wyoming Southern Baptist Convention office in Casper, WY. For two days, I helped those churches prepare for significant communication shifts that are now culturally commonplace. Now, I'm helping churches and organizations prepare for what's coming next. That Wyoming speaking engagement opened the door for me to take my oldest sons, Andrew and William, along for a father-sons trip that included driving across Wyoming to Rapid City, SD, where we had pancakes by the roadside, saw Mt. Rushmore, saw Wild Bill Hickok's grave in Deadwood, and drove over to Devil's Tower National Monument. Andrew was 12; Wi...

First Baptist Cumming, GA Worship  Bulletin - Sunday, May 26, 1968 On Sunday, May 26, 1968 - 50 years ago - I was baptized during the morning worship service at the First Baptist Church of Cumming, GA by Pastor Troy Acree, who was more lovingly referred to as "Preacher Acree." I was baptized with the sisters, Rita and Lisa Ingram; Lynn Raines; and Stephen Wood, who is today a pastor. Lisa and Lynn were in Kindergarten with me, and I still call them dear, dear friends today. (The worship bulletin from that Sunday morning is pictured. I was known as 'Scotty' then, and inexplicably the church office misspelled my last name. I've forgiven them). I was 8 years old. We like to think that times were simple, but they weren't simple at all. Sure, we didn't have microwave ovens, social media, and mobile telephones, but our country was only six years removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and worldwide tensions were still high. We were deeply involved in the V...