Scott Douglas Vaughan

I've done my fair share of public speaking across North America - preaching, teaching, story-telling . . . and, on occasion, half-truthing. No matter how far away from home I go, I try my best to get home as quickly as possible so I can sleep in my own bed. That's led to late-night and really early flights, and insane driving - sometimes 8 or 10 hours to get home. A few years ago, on a Thursday, I was just outside Gettysburg, PA, teaching an all-day conference for United Methodist church leaders. The event was over at 3 p.m. and I briefly thought about spending the night, but then just optioned to drive it - all 9 hours and 11 minutes. My ETA, I told my Vicki, was going to be about 1 a.m. give or take an hour for stops at a Cracker Barrel and rest areas. I've never met a Cracker Barrel or a rest area that I didn't like. I decided to avoid the fifth level of hell known as I-95 through DC and Richmond. Instead, I decided to take the I-81 South route down to I-77 to Charlo...

I sat on the back row of a funeral today - the funeral of a woman I met only one time, but a woman who became one of my dearest encouragers. Today, I listened and prayed as a vocalist sang "How Great Thou Art" and I cried to myself when she sang that most beautiful hymn, "In The Garden." A few of Gayle Brazell's friends gave testimony to her life well-lived, a life of incredible public service, kindness, love of family and friends, and friends-like-family, and especially her love for Jesus and His church. I can testify that she had room to love me, too. I met Gayle last December. Vicki and I were serving as the volunteer narrators for the Christmas musical performed by our church's Legacy Choir. After the performance, my friend Steve Mathias approached me with a neighbor he wanted me to meet.  A few months earlier, Gayle Brazell was battling cancer when she walked into Kitty's Hallmark, in Lexington. She didn't know me, but browsing through the stor...

Mr. Jingles is no more. Perhaps you follow me on Facebook and saw a post back in the winter about Mr. Jingles. One cool night - cause South Carolina nights never get cold - Vicki and I were enjoying dinner with Alex Trebek, hoping we could get smarter by watching Jeopardy.  Vicki gasped out loud, and I immediately looked at the television, thinking perhaps someone had answered a bizarre statement like, "Burt Reynolds was considered for this major movie role until the headliner refused to let him have it." Who is Michael Corleone in The Godfather? But Vicki was not gasping at the television. She was gasping at a brave little house mouse that ran back and forth across our family room floor before stopping in the middle of it. "It's Mr. Jingles!" I said out loud, remembering the name of the indestructible mouse from the movie, The Green Mile. "It's a mouse!" Vicki said, having never seen The Green Mile. Just like that, Mr. Jingles did a little jump an...

Take a look at the desk that is pictured here. It's a corner-style desk, largely made of simple metal tubes with some small wooden pieces and two very heavy pieces of thick, dark glass. Several years ago, I paid more than $200 for this desk. It has served me well. It's time for an upgrade. I offered this corner desk to several people, including my Vicki, and no one wanted it.  "I'm glad you liked it," Vicki said with some sarcasm mixed in there. What she meant was, 'I would never have bought that thing cause there are no drawers for storage. You really just bought a collection of metal tubing and two big slabs of glass.'   At least that's what I heard when she said, "I'm glad you liked it." With no takers - not even a bunch of Baptist preachers, who in my experience will grab anything free or maybe that's just food - I decided to take the desk to the local collection and recycling center. Don't get excited about that title - our c...

All who know me know that I love the church. Still, Vicki and I did not take our boys to Christmas Eve services. The Brotherhood - Once Upon A Time Here's why: The idea behind a Christmas Eve service is worship, right? At the time, our church did not offer childcare for smaller children, which meant - for us - four very excited little boys prevented everyone within a 50-foot radius from experiencing worship. We may have been agents of the devil. For an hour, Vicki and I experienced whispering, standing up and sitting down, pleas for the bathroom, and goofy excitement. At one point, Richard began crawling underneath the pew. William joined him. They wrestled. I left the Christmas Eve service mad at my boys, and that was a crappy attitude to have on Christmas Eve. So, we replaced Christmas Eve services with Hollywood. We went to the movies. Then we came home and made Philly Cheesesteaks, watched some Rankin-Bass Christmas cartoons, and everyone went to bed happy and with ...

If this were our last Christmas - and it could be. We would not care about gifts received. We would not make wish lists nor encourage others to do so. We would make a list of the people we love, and think of one thing to give each person - one thing that would forever remind them of our love for them. We would give ourselves - our treasures - away. Nothing would be "too much trouble." We would turn off mobile telephones, televisions, and computers. We would send Christmas cards. We would get out and about, we would go to parties, we would be the Christmas cheer in the middle of the chaos. We would jump at the chance to laugh with others rather than sit alone, comfortably, in the same old chair and in the same old room doing the same old things. We would be hospitable because the Bible tells us that we must. We must open the doors of our homes and invite people inside to laugh and love and sing and play games and tell stories. And, if invited to embrace someone else...

The Tika Namus and Big Boys have won 7 titles each In the fall of 1984, before there was the internet, online sports leagues, and when ESPN was only five years old, I joined my first fantasy football league among the newsroom brotherhood of The Statesboro Herald, in Statesboro, GA. Labor Day weekend, we gathered at Joel Ganger's house, paid a $20 entry fee and then in a snake draft, we chose teams among NFL players. Each team had a quarterback, a running back, two wide receivers, and a kicker. A schedule was built so that we each played one another several times. At the end of the weekend's games, you got the points that your offensive players scored and the tally was your team's score. You could change any player on your roster week-to-week, but it cost you $2 per move. Active players carried over year-to-year - just like real life. We followed the players through the newspaper box scores. The sports editor - a guy named Steve (I think) - was the commissioner and...