We Americans have so much for which to be thankful, but most of Christian citizens today would agree that there is an urgent need for another Great Awakening. Past revivals caused people to turn back to God and His will for America.
In talking to the Rev. Scott Vaughn, Baptist Student Union Director for East Central Community College, he affirmed, “Every great awakening in our country was started by college students.” I asked about the caliber of Christian college students attending BSU now, and he said he has some of the “most phenomenal leaders I’ve ever had,” and he sees “a lot more determination to live for God” in some of these students.
Scott Vaughn was born June 9, 1965, to Sid and Jo Vaughn, lived in Southaven until he was in the second grade, at which time they moved to Louisville. He stated that he was a very mischievous child and got spanked every day. I knew he was also very funny, so I asked him if he was kind of like Mark Lowery, which he laughingly agreed was a good comparison.
On a Wednesday night in 1972 when he was seven, at Colonial Hills Baptist Church, Scott recalled thinking of the verse from his Sunday School lesson, Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
He’d been running around and felt his heart beating hard in his chest. He interrupted the adults’ choir practice to cry, “Daddy, Jesus is knocking at my heart’s door!”
Later, his father explained the reason for his strong heartbeat and led him to a real salvation experience. His father used Romans 10:9-10, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteou
sness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
Young Scott learned early on that, to be saved, you must “believe He died on the cross and rose again for you, and you have to give Him control, make Him Lord.” God kept reminding him of that when, in high school and college, because of his great love of hunting and fishing, his ambition was to go to the Delta and start a duck hunting business. He said that every time he would think of it the Lord would tell him, “That’s not My will for your life.”
He attended Winston Academy, lettered in all four sports, and was salutatorian of his class in 1983. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with an accounting degree in May 1988. The summer of 1987, he decided to try to satisfy God, “to get Him off my back,” by going to South Korea as a summer missionary with the USM BSU group. He told Jack Owens, the IMB missionary in South Korea, that, of all the different ministries he had considered while planning his future, including pastoring, that he did not think the Lord was leading him into any of them.
Bro. Owens, who had been a BSU director in Iowa, told him, “You’ve considered every ministry except the one you’re involved with.”
He had met his wife Lisa Seal from Griffin, Ga., in 1985, and was impressed at that time, and told her that she would be his wife. She wasn’t so sure then, but they were married April 2, 1988. They almost have an empty nest, with two girls and two boys either college age or above. Polly Pittman was born in 1990, Jesse in 1993, Caleb in 1995, and Olivia was born in 1997.
After graduation in 1988, Scott entered New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity, with an emphasis on Campus Ministries During his last year there, he pastored First Baptist Church of Abita Springs, La. After coming home, he was pastor of Shiloh Baptist in Winston County for two and a half years, when God began to lead them to a move. He learned that the BSU Director position at ECCC was about to open up. He has been serving in that capacity while teaching Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey there for more than 22 years.
I asked about the focus of his ministry with the college students. He said it changed over the years, being evangelism at first but more lately with an emphasis on teaching, discipling, and helping students evangelize. Using James 2:19, “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble,” he teaches them, “Believing is insufficient. If He’s not your Lord, you’re lost.” He asks, “Is He the Boss? Is He the Master? Is He in complete control?” He gives the basic definition of sin as being “when I want my way over what God wants.”
Sometimes I have not asked this question in these interviews, and I apologize. I asked what he would like to say about his wife. Besides being a great wife and mother, he said, “For me, she is the compassionate, sensitive, discerning voice of God. A voice I fight, but I know to listen. I wouldn’t be in ministry, if it weren’t for her.”
