Author: Scott Humston

The Best of Small Town America: What a July 4th Parade Taught Me About Real Liberty

Hello, Praying Friend!

I don’t usually find myself tearing up at a July 4th parade. But I did this year.

For twenty-five years, hit-and-miss, we’ve managed to see the Fourth of July parade here in Mount Dora, Florida. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve caught about half of them. Most of those years with kids in tow — first it was two, then three, then four. Hot, sweaty, and excited, all rolled into one. As time passes, the way it always does, it was back to three kids. Then two. Then one. This year, it was just me. And Lucy the dog.

Same route down Donnelly Street. Same spot on the curb, or close enough to it, for twenty-five years. Southern Living just named it one of the ten best small-town Fourth of July parades in the South, which is the kind of thing that makes you look around at your own neighbors like, oh, I guess we really do have something here. And the same cast of characters that makes a small-town parade what it is: the Sheriff and his Auxiliary. The motorcycle club, louder than they need to be. Vietnam veterans, walking a little slower each year, saluted a little longer each year.

Lucy the dog picking out treats at the dog bakery in town
The Lions Club. Lawn bowling (yes, that’s a thing here). The Historical Society, reminding everybody this town has always been this town. Local businesses on flatbed trailers. Chick-fil-A. Boat tours. Kiwanis. Little League, in uniforms two sizes too big. Cheerleaders and football players. Beauty queens waving from convertibles. Politicians waving harder. The 4-H club with miniature ponies who could not care less about any of it — with parents keeping half an eye on their kids so nobody gets trampled getting too close. A giant inflatable foaming beer, because of course there is. A dance school, mid-routine.

General George himself walked the route!
And candy, everywhere. Fistfuls of it, thrown from every float and flatbed, and kids diving after it like it’s the only thing that matters — which, for about eight seconds, it is.

Nobody’s directing any of this, not really. There’s no official keeping the police cruiser off the ponies’ heels. It’s just everybody knowing, without being told twice, where they fall in line and where the crowd stands and where the kids can chase candy without getting run over.

A dad standing alone with his dog gets caught off guard by how much he loves this ordinary place.

Edmund Burke, writing about liberty two hundred years before any of us stood on Donnelly Street, put it plainer than I ever could: “The only liberty I mean is a liberty connected with order; and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them.” Standing there watching twenty-five years’ worth of the same parade go by the same way, I felt the truth of that in my bones before I ever had words for it. Liberty was never about erasing the order. It’s what happens because there is one.

Which explains something from ancient scripture that many of us have, perhaps, read a hundred times without really grasping it.

LIFE — “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

LIBERTY — “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” And: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

HAPPINESS — “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love … I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:10–11)

This month, this year, and each moment of our lives, may we pursue His grace and Life — standing on the curb He’s given us, and finding it’s exactly wide enough for everything that matters.

Sharing Wonder,

July 10, 2026
From the Rabbit Room to North Wind Manor – A Twenty-Year Story (and a Weekend I’ll Never Forget)
Hello, Praying Friend!

This story has a bit of a backstory, so grab a coffee — I’ll wait.

Ready? Okay, here we go.

In Oxford, England, beginning in the early 1930s, a loose-knit group of writers and Oxford professors began meeting weekly — first in formal sessions at Magdalen College, and eventually in the more relaxed setting of a pub called The Eagle and Child, known affectionately to locals as “the Bird and Baby.” They called themselves the Inklings. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were the most famous among them, but the circle also included Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, and others — friends who gathered not for fame, but for fellowship.

Tucked at the back of that pub was a small, private lounge with worn leather chairs and a fireplace that had clearly heard a few centuries of stories. Over the doorway hung a modest sign: The Rabbit Room.

It was there, on Monday or Tuesday lunchtimes, that these men read their unfinished manuscripts aloud to one another — and didn’t always like what they heard. Tolkien was famously blunt about Lewis’s drafts. Lewis gave as good as he got. But out of that honest, sometimes brutal critique came two of the most beloved bodies of fantasy literature ever written — The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. In June of 1950, in that same back room, Lewis handed out the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for his friends to read.

A Wish Twenty Years in the Making

In February of 2020 — just weeks before the world as we knew it shut down — a lifelong wish of mine came true. Debi and I sat down for a proper English lunch in that very room. I still pinch myself thinking about it. To sit where Lewis and Tolkien once argued, laughed, and shaped stories that would outlive them by a century — there’s nothing quite like it.

An Idea Crosses the Atlantic

In 2006, singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson made his own pilgrimage to that same Rabbit Room. He came home with more than a good memory — he came home with a question: What if there was a place like this here, in the States? A gathering spot for Christian artists, writers, and musicians to do the same kind of work — encouraging, critiquing, creating together?

That question became a vision. And over the next two decades, God assembled the pieces — the right people, the right place, and a growing community of artists hungry for exactly this kind of fellowship. The Rabbit Room was born in 2006 — twenty years ago this year.

Their mission, simply put: cultivating and curating story, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world.

From an Idea to a Movement

What started as a vision has become something much bigger:
- Hutchmoot — an annual gathering in Nashville where artists and audiences come together for teaching, music, and community — eventually grew large enough to spawn a UK version as well.
- North Wind Manor — a permanent home in Nashville, built to house the growing ministry and give it roots.
- A community of more than 2,000 Christ-centered who support the Rabbit Room monthly.
- Over 18,000 members connected through their Facebook group, and more than 32,000 followers on Facebook alone.
All of it traces back to one small room, behind one pub, in one corner of Oxford — and a question one songwriter brought home with him.

Ten Days Before the Wedding

Twenty years after that first vision took shape, my son Nate and I found ourselves walking into the middle of it — less than ten days before he gets married. (Can I throw a bachelor party for two, or what?)

As a member of the online Rabbit Room community, I’d been invited to take part in two things: an open house at North Wind Manor, and an invite-only members’ gathering the following day. Nate came along for what turned into a full weekend. We started with the open house, wandering through the space that’s become the physical heart of this whole movement.

One moment was just mind boggling: In the library at North Wind Manor sits a fireplace — the actual fireplace, hauled out of Tolkien’s bedroom in England and reassembled here in Nashville. The fire was lit when I saw it. I just stood there for few minutes. The same hearth that once warmed the room where Middle-earth was dreamed up is now warming a library full of people still telling stories because of him. Twenty years and an ocean apart, and somehow it all connects back to the same fire.

Tolkien’s bedroom fireplace from England, now in the library at North Wind Manor.

That evening we caught an Andrew Peterson concert at the Ryman — open to the public, and packed with people who clearly loved his music as much as we did. I wasn’t prepared for how moving it was. Over the years I’ve caught a couple of shows at the Ryman, and the room has a way of holding sound that no other room quite does — that old wooden church-turned-theater seems built for exactly this kind of night. Andrew sang the songs that have shaped so much of the Rabbit Room’s story, and at the end of the concert the whole room — close to two thousand people — sang the doxology together. It wasn’t a performance so much as a shared exhale.

I looked over at Nate at one point and just felt grateful — grateful for the music, grateful for the room, grateful to be sitting next to my son less than ten days before he started a whole new chapter of his life. There are concerts you attend, and there are concerts that put something back into you. This was the second kind.

Saturday was the members’ gathering: a full day of speakers, musicians, and conversations with people who’d traveled from all over to be part of it. Sunday morning we grabbed breakfast at Proper Bagel before heading to services at Church of the Redeemer.

It was, without exaggeration, one of the best weekends I’ve had with my son. Quiet, full, unhurried — the kind of time together that doesn’t need anything dramatic to happen to matter.

The Takeaway

I almost didn’t write this part, because it’s tempting to end a story like this with “and that’s how Dad and Nate spent a great weekend together” — but that’s not really the point, and it’s not why I’m telling you any of this.

Here’s what I actually want you to walk away with: this entire twenty-year story started with one person noticing something good, and asking, “What if this existed somewhere else, for other people?”

Andrew Peterson didn’t sit in that Rabbit Room and think about himself. He thought about the writers, musicians, and artists who didn’t have a place like it — and he spent the next two decades helping build one. He couldn’t have known it would become Hutchmoot, or North Wind Manor, or a community of thousands. He just knew the question was worth chasing…

That’s the invitation here, for you and for me. Most of us aren’t going to start a ministry that reaches tens of thousands of people. But all of us have a “what if” sitting somewhere — a gathering that doesn’t exist yet, a person who needs encouragement, a small thing we could build or start or simply show up for, that might ripple farther than we’ll ever see.

The Rabbit Room didn’t start as a strategy. It started as a question, asked by just one ordinary person paying attention and asking…

What’s your “What If?”

Sharing Wonder,
June 24, 2026
The House Is Not the Point

I first read about him when I was 10. Maybe 12. He’s the first person mentioned in Humston’s Glemings. A hard-bound book with the Humston family tree written out in generation by generation paragraphs.

He came back to my mind earlier this year. So, I did some deeper scouring. First I found his sermon, first preached in 1588. The entire thing in a British Archive. Then his clergy record turned up— Church of England. His name was Robert Humston. And sometime that year, just weeks after the Spanish Armada had scattered and England had exhaled, he stood up and preached from Hebrews 3:3.

“The builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.”

I’ve been sitting with that verse ever since.

Think about the moment he preached it. England had just survived something that had no business going the way it did. The greatest naval force in the world — one hundred and thirty ships — sent to crush a small island nation. And it didn’t. Storms came. Ships sank. England stood.

A lesser preacher might have made England the hero.

Robert Humston pointed somewhere else.

The house survived. But glory belongs to the Builder. More on Robert later.

I think about that a lot in my own work. I’ve spent thirty-plus years creating moments designed to do one thing: get past the cynicism. C.S. Lewis called it stealing past the watchful dragons — those accumulated layers of disappointment and disillusionment that make people cross their arms at anything that asks them to believe something.

When it works — when I watch someone’s face shift from guarded to genuinely open — I don’t feel like I did something.

I feel like something was done through me.

That’s an important distinction. Especially for leaders.

The most dangerous moment in any leader’s life isn’t failure. It’s the moment after something genuinely works. When the room responds. When the initiative lands. When the people follow. That moment has a gravitational pull — it wants you to believe you’re the reason.

You’re not the reason. You’re the house.

Eugene Peterson spent a career arguing that the pastor’s job isn’t to manufacture transcendence — it’s to help people see what’s already there. The glory was never yours to generate. You just had to get out of the way long enough for people to encounter it.

Robert Humston figured that out in 1588. The sermon is 438 years old.

We’re still learning it.

The best leaders I’ve ever observed share one quiet habit: they’re genuinely more interested in what God — or something much larger than themselves — is doing than in what they’re doing. Their work is excellent because it’s not about them. They lead with imagination precisely because they’re not trying to protect a reputation. There’s nothing to protect. They’re just the house.

The best thing you’ll ever build will point past you. That’s the whole idea.

Lead from there.

Leading With Imagination,

May 26, 2026
Mount Dora Mornings: Finding God in the Ordinary

Hello, Praying Friend!

The road has a particular seduction, and after thirty-plus years of airports, green rooms, and hotel breakfast bars that all look exactly the same, I know it well. There’s a ritual to loading the car, running the checklist, pulling out of the driveway while the house disappears in the rearview mirror — and something in you exhales, not because you’re relieved to leave, but because the road is familiar.

I’ll confess something that I find mildly embarrassing: the smell of a rental car comforts me. That particular new-plastic, climate-controlled, anonymous smell. It’s disconcerting how much I love it, because it means I’ve spent so much of my adult life in one that the smell of a strange new car feels familiar, like an old, comfy chair. For most of my career, that smell was (and still is, I guess) the smell of purpose.

I am learning — slowly, not without some resistance — that I had that exactly backward.

Mount Dora, Florida, is a town that doesn’t try very hard to impress you, and somehow impresses you anyway. A quaint, unhurried place in the heart of hilly Lake County that carries the atmosphere of a small New England town, except the oaks are covered with Spanish moss and the light on the water changes hour by hour, and if you take a few minutes of that hour to notice, it can be profoundly spiritual. For a long time, this place was a best-kept Florida secret. It is less of a secret now, which is both a blessing and a minor grief, depending on the weekend and who you ask.

Five years ago, there was only one place downtown where you could get great coffee. Now there are six.

More mornings than not, I end up at the Deli Lama — and the name alone should tell you something about it. Great coffee, unusual, unique, and great food, and Sunshine (that’s her name) behind the counter or somewhere nearby. Sunshine used to go to church. We’ve talked about that a few times, not in any directed or strategic way, just the way Christ has guided our conversations. She hasn’t said much, and I haven’t pushed. But I’ve learned that leaving the door to a conversation open is important. Sometimes an open door is what lets someone else in, too.

Then there’s Cody’s on 4th, where the team waves at me when I walk in, or even past the windows, zig-zagging through the lovely Parisian-style outside seating. It’s not just the staff trained to make customers feel welcome, but a real wave, the kind that means we know you. Cody was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks back and caught a magic show, texting me from the audience to ask if I knew the performer. As a matter of fact, I did — we competed against each other when we were sixteen years old. (That’s the thing about a small town and a life lived long enough in one place. The world turns out to be embarrassingly small, and that smallness, which you once might have mistaken for a limitation, reveals itself over time as something closer to a beautiful gift.)

There is a man I’ve gotten to know over the last few years through these kinds of unhurried encounters — conversations that drift from nothing in particular to something real, the way they do when you give them enough time and neither person is trying to get somewhere. He doesn’t fit any category you’d expect to find in an essay about morning coffee and the presence of God. His vocabulary runs very colorful, his appearance suggests a set of life experiences considerably different from mine, and for a long time, our conversations stayed comfortably on the surface, which was fine. Then, a few months ago, he opened up to me in ways I found genuinely startling — heavy, personal things, offered carefully, the way people do when they’ve been carrying something alone for a while. And then, almost as an aside, the way people say the truest things quickly and sideways, he asked me to let him know the next time I was preaching. So he could come.

I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.

C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, wrote that it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses — that the dullest, most uninteresting person you might talk to today could one day be a creature so glorious you’d want to fall to your knees before them, or else a darkness you’d only recognize from nightmares. “There are no ordinary people,” Lewis concluded. “You have never talked to a mere mortal.” I used to read that passage as a call to treat strangers well, a kind of elevated reminder about human dignity. I think it’s something more specific than that now. It’s an argument for staying put long enough to find out who someone actually is.

(BTW, I have invited my friend; he couldn’t make it that day, and when I am up again in the pulpit on a Sunday, I’ll extend another invite.)

Mostly, the road doesn’t give you that. The road gives you one night, one show, one green room conversation that ends when the gear gets loaded. The road has its own grace — I’ve watched wonder break open in rooms full of strangers, and I will never stop being grateful for that. But the road also flatters a certain way of moving through the world, always arriving somewhere new, always the person who just came from somewhere else, never quite rooted enough to be known well.

Mount Dora is showing me something different. It’s teaching me that being known is not a compromise of the calling — it’s an extension of it. That the same God who works in the large room with the lighting rig and the audience and the moment of communal astonishment also works at the small table and the coffee cup and the man who surprises you on a Tuesday morning with something he’s never told anyone. I believe these are not two different categories of experience separated by magnitude, one sacred and one ordinary, but the same experience rooted in Christ, wonder, and imagination, but wearing different clothes.

Six coffee shops where there was once one. A neighbor who asks about your schedule. A continuing conversation with a lady named Sunshine that is incomplete. A text from a Vegas showroom that connects me back to a sixteen-year-old version of myself, which I’d almost forgotten. These are what I call breakfast moments — moments small enough to miss and large enough to change you, moments you can talk to God about over the morning cup because He was already there, and you almost walked past Him on your way to somewhere else.

I am still learning to love being home. Still learning that my town is remarkable not in spite of its simplicity but through it — in its people, its unhurried rhythms, the particular way the light hits the lake on a morning or an unreal evening Sunset. The rental car still smells good to me. I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon. But I’m beginning to understand that a mundane Monday in a town that knows your name might be the thing I was looking for on all those long roads between somewhere and somewhere else.

Leading With Imagination,

April 22, 2026
Not Always Happiness, But Joy

Hello, Praying Friend!

My mom turned 83 yesterday. I spent the day with her—we had a great time! She rarely meets a stranger. There was the time she was robbed at gunpoint at a fabric store in Junction City, Kansas, when I was in third grade. I suppose he was a stranger. Also, in first grade, in Orlando, my two sisters and I broke down with mom on I-4. A stranger picked us up in his van. I remember sitting on the floor in the back—probably a VW Bus—seeing an empty glass Coke bottle and thinking, “If he tries anything, I’ll hit him with this!” Pretty violent for a first grader, who’d never seen a movie. (Well, we did have to watch The Sound of Music every year with mom when it came on TV.) But I digress.

My mom is losing her memory to Alzheimer’s. (Her dad had it too. I remember our family dealing with it when I was in high school.) But this is about my mama. In my book, Sharing Wonder, I wrote, “My mom is one of two people that I think has a direct line to God.” I still believe that. Digressed again, sorry, let’s see, where am I…

Oh, yes, mama. God. And strangers.

She’s never met a stranger (not withstanding the aforementioned). Yesterday, as we spent her birthday eating and talking—in case you’re wondering where I get my gift of gab from, ‘tis her! While enjoying an amazing piece of cheesecake from cousin Allie Grace’s bakery in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, my mom struck up a conversation with a young woman named Megan. I won’t bore you with the details, but when it was all over, she gave Mom her card. She is a recent veteran and now has her own business in town as an aesthetician.

After about 20 minutes, Megan took her now-not-so-fresh order to go. As mom and I talked and laughed, I thought, “I don’t think my mom has ever had a facial.” Few manicures, and I’m sure fewer pedicures. She’s never been the type. She didn’t get her ears pierced until her forties.

As she sipped the frosted coffee Allie made for her, I scanned the QR code on Megan’s card. Quickly, I booked a facial for Mom that afternoon. We finished up at Allie’s and went home to rest before her pampering.

When we walked through the shop door, Megan met us and said excitedly, “It’s so great to see you both again!” My mom looked at me, puzzled, and asked, “How do you know each other?”

Ah. Alzheimers.

I quickly explained that we had met earlier that afternoon at Allie’s Bakery. I said, “Mom, Megan’s giving you a facial.” Mom replied, “Do you think it’ll help this face?” Laughter erupts.

Earlier that morning, I reminded Mom it was her 83rd birthday. She replied, “I guess it is.” Then I asked, “Mom, how old do you feel—not your real age, but how old do you feel?” She said, “90, I think.” Laughter erupts.

There are always laughs around my mom, but it isn’t easy. As my sister says, “When I leave mom’s house, I sometimes feel like I’m the one losing my mind.”

Watching a loved one—especially a deeply loving mother—struggle for words and then talk about grading students’ papers that morning, despite being retired for 20 years, is hard.

Many of you know exactly what that feels like.

But we still have joy—not always happiness, but joy. My mom poured her life into people at church and in the classroom: teaching, leading, directing, mothering, hugging, crying, motivating, and grieving with many. Her love for Jesus fueled it all.

Experts say as the disease progresses, people can change—often growing angry or lashing out. I don’t know if we’ll see that with mom. I pray we don’t. Losing her laughter would be terrible.

But even if the disease overtakes her mind, I believe she’ll keep her joy inside. Jesus has her, even if she can’t express it. If I were a betting man, and I’m not, I’d bet she’ll go out with a smile and a song.

After the session, I asked, “How’d she do?” Megan said, “Great! She loved the shoulder massage! If she’d stopped talking, I think she’d have fallen asleep!” Megan, a stranger four hours ago, was wonderful with mom: kind, gentle, and spoke to her as if she were her grandmother. I liked Megan the moment I saw her at Allie’s—camo pants and a beige t-shirt with Holy Spirit symbols in rows.

We’re in the days between Resurrection and Ascension and then Pentecost—the waiting, praying days. Acts says they “all joined together constantly in prayer.” I think my mama has been in that upper room for years. I think Jesus—who doesn’t wait on a calendar—sent Megan, camo, Holy Spirit symbols and all, to remind me of that.

May your Eastertide be filled with joy even in the midst of struggle and strife.

Leading With Imagination,

April 20, 2026
Sosua: Spring Break and Spiritual Stuff

Hello, Praying Friend!

Many of you know I’ve partnered with New Missions for several years now — raising awareness and support for their schools in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At these Laugh All Night comedy concerts, we have a fun (and genuinely funny) time while ultimately doing something that outlasts the laughter: changing the life of a child. My own family started sponsoring a child through one of those events. One thing led to another, and I found myself traveling the country telling anyone who would listen about this chance to invest in a child’s future in Haiti or the Dominican Republic.

In March 2025, my youngest daughter Rachel and I flew to the DR and met up with a youth group from First Baptist Church of Bentonville, Arkansas. We also — finally — got to meet our sponsored child, Dahian, in person. (You can read all about that trip here.)

I came home from that trip knowing one thing: in 2026, I wanted to bring a team from First Baptist Mount Dora.

So in October, we started planning. We brought eleven people — nine adults ranging in age from 19 to 79, and two seventeen-year-olds. We designed day programs at two schools built around music, magic tricks, Bible lessons, games, and crafts. This wasn’t a construction trip or a medical mission — though God bless the people who do those things. This was a relationship trip. We connected with kids and adults through play, conversation, and shared worship. We showed up, we sat down, and we stayed present.

But here’s what always happens on trips like this: the people who come to serve end up being the ones who receive.

My team was no exception. One person said, “These kids have, compared to us, almost nothing — and yet they are so happy, so joyful.” Another said, “I experienced unconditional love from children who didn’t even know my name.” That’s the thing about poverty that prosperity has a hard time teaching you: you cannot manufacture that kind of joy. It doesn’t come from square footage or a full refrigerator. It comes from somewhere else entirely.

I learned this years ago when my pastor at the time urged me — honestly, I needed urging — to Belize. And I understood something on that trip I’ve never forgotten: a mission to a developing country isn’t primarily about converting the heathen (them) but it’s about converting the proud (me). That inversion still humbles me.

Cross-cultural experience isn’t a luxury. I believe it’s essential to a well-rounded, spiritually alive life. And I don’t mean boarding a cruise ship, glancing at the scenery from the deck, buying a refrigerator magnet, and sailing home. There’s nothing sinful about a cruise — but there’s a difference between “observing” a world and “entering” it.

A friend of my oldest daughter recently spent six months aboard one of the Mercy Ships. She sailed to Africa, anchored in different ports, and served as hundreds — maybe thousands — of people came aboard for medical care they couldn’t get anywhere else. That’s entering the world.

As a father, I knew my children needed that. To sit with people who are different from them. To laugh with them. To share a meal. To visit their homes, their schools, their churches. To worship in a language you don’t fully speak and discover that worship doesn’t need translation. As a family pastor, I see how much parents and children need shared mission experiences — moments that bond them around something bigger than themselves.

On our first day together, I reminded our team of something I come back to again and again: most people don’t come to faith through condemnation. They come through invitation.

Jesus didn’t corner people. He called them. “Come and see.” “Follow me.” “Come, all you who are weary.” He still does.

We went to the Dominican Republic to offer that same invitation — to children, to their families, their teachers and leaders. And somehow, somewhere along the way, we received one too.

I always come home different. Not dramatically different I guess — I’ve never sold my house or quit my job to head back. But something always shifts. I’m writing this from Sosua, DR, a couple of hours before we head to the airport — and I can already feel it. You spend a few days with kids who grab your hand like you’re the best thing that’s happened to them all week, and it has a way of quietly rearranging your priorities. You start asking different questions on the drive home from work. Different questions at the dinner table. Maybe you hold your phone a little less, and look around more.

And here’s the thing — you can enter and not just observe, too. We’re already talking about 2027. If something in this story stirred something in you, don’t ignore that. That stirring has a name. Talk to me. Or if you want to start somewhere smaller, check out NewMissions.org — you can sponsor a child, support a school, or just learn more about what God is doing in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It doesn’t take a plane ticket to get involved. Though I’ll be honest — the plane ticket is worth it.

Leading With Imagination,

March 24, 2026
The 2025 Year-In-Review

Down the Rabbit Hole of 2025: A Year Well Wondered

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February 12, 2026
Hospitality of Performance
Hello, Praying Friend!

“Buy the Air Jordans,” He Said

When I first began performing The Pro Kids Show outreach in schools in the fall of 1994, my business partner, mentor, and creative director—Steve—gave me some great advice:

“Buy the coolest, most in-style shoes you can afford. You’ll immediately connect with the 6th graders.”

Back in ’94, that was for sure the Jordans.

So I did. I spent the $125 I couldn’t afford. At the time, it seemed like a ridiculous amount of money for athletic shoes—in my Johnston & Murphy mind.

You see, at that time many elementary schools were K–6th. Meaning Kindergarten through sixth grade. So the shoes gave me immediate “street cred” with the 6th graders—especially the boys.

As I would learn over and over again in the following years, Steve was right.

As I stepped into the audiences (for years I started the show coming in from the back squirting water!) and made my way to the stage, sure enough, the 6th graders ooh’d, ahh’d, and pointed at my shoes.

As I jumped onto the stage, I immediately held the attention of 500 kids and parents. The kids leaned in—to use the modern term. Some of those hard-hearted, arms-crossed parents also sat up and paid attention.

“Who is this modern-day pied piper?” they pondered as the fun began.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about those moments—first rehearsed in imagination, then in actual rehearsal, then lived out in hundreds of real spaces over 36 years.

It’s in those spaces—some sacred, some secular—that hospitality of imagination came to life for me and for them. Moments where audiences became curious enough to stay and open enough to encounter something beyond themselves.

Creating Space for Encounter

When Jesus sat down to eat with tax collectors and sinners, the religious leaders couldn’t understand it.

“Why does he eat with them?” they muttered.

But Jesus knew something they didn’t: transformation rarely happens through condemnation. It happens through invitation. And Jesus was great at inviting.

The table wasn’t just a place to eat. It was a carefully crafted space where outcasts could feel seen, where the isolated could experience belonging, where the proud could be humbled and the humble lifted.

In the Scriptures, you’ll notice that Jesus didn’t wait for people to clean up before He welcomed them in. He welcomed them in so they could be transformed. Biblical hospitality doesn’t demand conformity first—it creates the conditions for encounter.

The work here at New Dimensions Evangelism—that’s what we’re trying to do every single time we create a resource, write an article, or step in front of an audience.

I am not just “performing” at people. We’re creating space for them—a space where God might show up in ways they never expected.

The Stage as Sacred Space

I’ve often said that what I do is “education through entertainment.” But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s evangelism through hospitality.

Every event—these aren’t just performances—they’re acts of radical welcome.

We’re saying: Come as you are. Bring your doubts, your distractions, your defenses. You’re invited in.

And in that space, in those moments, something extraordinary happens.

Kids who’ve been told to sit still and be quiet are invited to participate, to laugh, to imagine. Parents who’ve been running on empty are reminded of joy.

Communities fragmented by politics and division share a moment of collective wonder.

And in the middle of it all, the Gospel—not always preached at them, but offered to them—with the gentle generosity of a host extending an open hand.

But here’s what I believe: the Church has always been called to lead with imaginative love.

We worship a God who:
- Spoke creation into existence (imagination)
- Became flesh and moved into the neighborhood (hospitality)
- Fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish (generosity with what we have)
- Died on a cross to reconcile us to Himself (self-giving love)
Our calling isn’t just to tell people about this God. It’s to show them—by the way we create spaces, extend invitations, and welcome the stranger.

When we lead with imagination, we’re not just solving problems or filling seats. We’re creating moments. We’re setting tables in the presence of people’s doubts, fears, and indifference—and trusting that Jesus will show up.

Your Part in the Story

Just as I invite audiences to come along with me while I’m sharing from the stage, I invite you to continue to be part of this story.

Every time you pray for this ministry, you’re participating in this act of hospitality. Every time you give, you’re helping us extend an invitation. Every time you share what we’re doing, you’re extending that invitation even further.

You’re not just supporting a small ministry that does big things—you’re partnering in the imaginative work of making space for God to move. To move in hearts that haven’t felt wonder in years… or perhaps ever.

And that matters more than you know.

Because somewhere, a person is going to laugh at something I do or say on stage. Or perhaps lean in and truly listen to a story of truth.

And in that laughter or listening, a hard heart will crack open. Through that door, the Spirit will move—gentle, surprising, undeniable.

Not because of my “performance,” but because of the space.

The hospitable, imaginative, prayerfully prepared space where encounter with Jesus becomes possible.

May your own life be a place where others feel welcomed, where wonder awakens, and where Christ is encountered—not as an idea, but as a presence.

Leading With Imagination,

Yes Scott! I want to partner with you and NDE to proclaim the Gospel to families!
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February 9, 2026
Lead With Imagination: 21 Books That Changed How I Think About Leadership in 2025

I plan on reading as much as I can every year.

So honestly? Not quite 2 books a month feels like a bit of a letdown. But I’m always chasing questions—questions about what separates transformational leaders from transactional ones. What makes some people see possibilities where others see only problems? Why do certain leaders inspire movements while others barely maintain momentum?

These books aren’t listed in the order I read them—more like the order they’re connecting in my head right now.

And somewhere between my third read of Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt (Roosevelt nearly dying in the Amazon—still excellent!) and Henry Winkler explaining how he became the Fonz despite severe dyslexia in Being Henry, something crystallized:

The leaders who change things aren’t necessarily smarter—they just imagine differently.

Why Imagination Matters More Than Intelligence in Leadership

Let me show you what I mean through the lens of 21 very different books.

The Curiosity Principle: Seeing Stories Others Miss

Charles Kuralt drove backroads for a living.

I’ve been listening to his book America yearly for the better part of twenty-five years now. It’s hands down a favorite I return to for so many reasons. This year, I added Charles Kuralt’s Summer to the rotation.

Here’s what Kuralt keeps teaching me: he wasn’t just observing America—he was imagining it. He saw stories where others saw nothing. Small towns. Quiet people. Ordinary moments that contained extraordinary meaning.

That’s the thing about imaginative leaders: they’re insatiably curious about what everyone else drives past.

Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt reinforced this principle. Roosevelt’s imagination wasn’t wild dreaming—it was fueled by his willingness to venture into the unknown. To ask questions nobody else was asking. To see an unmapped river and think, “I wonder what’s there?”

The Timing Factor: When Matters As Much As What

Jesse Cole put a baseball team in yellow tuxedos and called it Fans First.

I heard him speak at a leadership event and bought his book the moment I got home. People said he was crazy. Now the Savannah Bananas sell out stadiums by reimagining what baseball could be.

But here’s what Daniel Pink’s The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing taught me: Cole’s genius wasn’t just what he imagined—it was when he executed it.

Timing isn’t luck. It’s a skill. And imaginative leaders understand that the right idea at the wrong time is still the wrong idea.

The Human Connection: Reimagining Relationships

Chris Voss taught hostage negotiators to say “that’s right” instead of “you’re right” in Never Split the Difference.

Two words. Completely different imagination of how humans connect.

Adam Grant’s Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success went even deeper: givers don’t just imagine win-win scenarios—they imagine an entirely different scoreboard. They see success as something that multiplies rather than divides.

This is where imagination becomes practical. It’s not about grand visions—it’s about seeing people differently than others see them.

The Structure Underneath: Building Frameworks for Imagination

Here’s an admission: Brian McDonald’s Invisible Ink: Building Stories from the Inside Out wasn’t that great of a book.

But buried in there was this one idea that stuck with me: every great story is built from the inside out. Structure matters. Framework matters.

You can’t lead imaginatively if you’re making it up as you go.

Joe Rigney’s Leadership and Emotional Sabotage and John Medina’s Brain Rules both reinforced this from different angles. Imaginative leaders understand the systems—emotional, neurological, organizational—that shape human behavior. They don’t just dream; they build frameworks others can inhabit.

The Sacred Dimension: Holding Space for Mystery

I wasn’t expecting a spiritual thread to emerge across my reading, but it did.
Tyler Staton reintroduced me to the Holy Spirit in The Familiar Stranger. Randy Alcorn painted Heaven in vivid detail in his book Heaven. Blaine Eldredge unpacked Jesus’s entire vision in The Paradise King. Andrew Peterson reminded me that imagination requires cultivation in The God of the Garden.

Here’s what they all said: Imagination isn’t just practical. It’s sacred.

The most transformative leaders hold space for mystery, not just metrics. They understand that some of the most important things can’t be measured, only experienced.

The Fear Factor: Naming What Holds Us Back

Napoleon Hill warned me about sabotage in Outwitting the Devil—how fear disguises itself as “being realistic.”

Joe Rigney said the same thing with different words in Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: anxiety will wreck your family, destroy your church, and ruin the world if you let it.

Imaginative leadership means seeing the obstacles others miss—or refusing to see the obstacles others invent.

The Humanity Check: Admitting What You Don’t Know

Alan Alda made me laugh-cry with Never Have Your Dog Stuffed—my second time through, and it hit even harder.

I’ve loved Alan Alda since absorbing MASH as a child. (Yes, I own the series on DVD. Yes, it’s also in my streaming library. Don’t judge me.)

Richard Paul Evans got vulnerable in Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life.

Both reminded me: imaginative leadership isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about being human enough to admit when you don’t.

The Story That Changed Everything

Claire Keegan wrote Small Things Like These, which is only 128 pages but absolutely gutted me.

One man. One choice. One act of imagination that said, “What if I chose compassion over compliance?”

It changed everything.

This is what imagination looks like in real life. Not grand gestures. Not corporate vision statements. Just one
person deciding to see differently, and act accordingly.

Six Leadership Lessons on Imagination

Here’s what 2025’s reading taught me about leading with imagination:

1. You can’t imagine new possibilities if you’re not curious about what already exists. Kuralt taught me this through his decades of backroad journalism.

2. You can’t time your vision if you don’t understand rhythm. Pink and Cole showed me that when matters as much as what.

3. You can’t lead people you don’t truly see. Voss and Grant demonstrated that imagination transforms relationships.

4. You can’t build something lasting without structure. McDonald and Rigney proved that frameworks enable imagination, they don’t constrain it.

5. You can’t dream beyond your fears if you don’t name them. Hill and Rigney warned that anxiety disguises itself as realism.

6. You can’t create something meaningful if you’ve lost your sense of wonder. Peterson, Staton, Alcorn, and Eldredge reminded me that imagination has a sacred dimension.

I closed out the year with G.K. Chesterton’s Winter’s Fire: A Christmas—turning Christmas into philosophy, reminding me that the best imaginative leaders return to ancient wisdom, not just chase novel ideas.

Laurie Beth Jones’s Jesus, CEO said something similar: the deepest innovation often comes from the oldest truths.

What’s on your reading List?

I’m already building my 2026 list.

What are you reading that’s stretching how you see leadership? What’s teaching you to imagine differently?

Drop your recommendations in the comments below—I genuinely need them.

The Complete 2025 Leadership Reading List

1. America by Charles Kuralt
2. Winter’s Fire: A Christmas by G.K. Chesterton
3. The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
4. Heaven by Randy Alcorn
5. Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill
6. Invisible Ink: Building Stories from the Inside Out by Brian McDonald
7. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant
8. Fans First: Change the Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole
9. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
10. The Paradise King: The Tragic History and Spectacular Future of Everything According to Jesus of
Nazareth by Blaine Eldredge
11. Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and Beyond by Henry Winkler
12. Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy
Your Church, and Ruin the World by Joe Rigney
13. Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life by Richard Paul Evans
14. Jesus, CEO (25th Anniversary Edition): Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership by Laurie
Beth Jones
15. The Familiar Stranger: (Re)Introducing the Holy Spirit to Those in Search of an Experiential
Spirituality by Tyler Staton
16. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned by Alan Alda
17. Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded): 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home,
and School by John Medina
18. The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson
19. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
20. Charles Kuralt’s Summer by Charles Kuralt
21. The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

January 6, 2026
The Wonder of the Magi: What the Wise Men Teach Us About Seeking Christ

Hello, Praying Friend!

Every Christmas, I find myself returning to the story of the Magi, the Wise Men who followed the Star of Bethlehem in search of the newborn King.

It’s one of the most mysterious and meaningful parts of the Christmas story, and for me, it holds a special pull. Maybe it’s because the word magic traces back to the Magi, or because I’ve spent more than thirty years as a professional magician. But mostly, it’s because their journey captures the heart of what Christmas is really about… seeking Christ, even when the road leads somewhere unexpected.

The Magi were men who spent their lives looking for something more. Signs, patterns, meaning. Little clues that the world was wider and more wondrous than most people realized.

That part, I understand.

And then one night, they saw something different. A star unlike any star they had ever studied. It didn’t simply shine… it called to them. Whatever it was, it was strong enough to push them out of their comfort and into a journey that would take weeks, maybe months, across rugged terrain.

These were wealthy, educated men, not desert wanderers. You don’t saddle up for a trip like that unless you’re convinced something extraordinary is waiting for you.

Naturally, they assumed that “extraordinary thing” would be found in a palace. Where else do you expect to find a newborn king?

So they followed the star to Jerusalem, probably expecting celebration, royal announcements, maybe even a parade. Instead, they walked straight into confusion. Herod’s paranoia filled the room. No one in the palace had seen the star. No one had heard about a child. No one expected a king.

Still, the Magi pressed on.

The star led them past the noise and expectations of Jerusalem, past the places where power likes to gather, and down into a quiet little town called Bethlehem.

And this is the part I love. They didn’t find a throne. They found a house. A young mother. And a small child who probably looked like any other toddler in Judea.

Nothing impressive. Nothing royal. Nothing that matched the prophecy they had studied.

Yet the moment they stepped inside, something in them recognized the truth.

The wise have a way of knowing when they’re standing in the presence of something holy.

They didn’t ask for proof. They didn’t question the setting. They didn’t say, “We came all this way for this?” They simply bowed. Because they understood… maybe more clearly than anyone else at the time… that God had led them not to a throne, but to a Person. Not to political power, but to a quiet, steady presence that would one day change the world.

Their gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—were more than generous offerings. They were a quiet confession. We know who You are. A King. God with us. The One who will give His life.

And when they left that little home, I imagine they walked away different. Not because their journey was finished, but because the Wonder they found there would travel back with them.

What draws me to this story again and again is how upside-down it feels. The palace had no idea a King had been born. But a humble house welcomed Him. The scholars in Jerusalem missed the signs entirely. But foreigners from the East followed the light all the way to Jesus.

And maybe that’s why this story still whispers to us today.

God still shows up in unexpected places. He still reveals Himself to people willing to look. He still leads by quiet light rather than loud announcement.

And if we slow down long enough… if we pay attention… He still surprises us with Wonder in the small, ordinary, overlooked parts of our lives.

This Christmas, I hope we become a little more like the Magi. Curious enough to seek. Humble enough to bow. Open enough to recognize Christ even when He appears in places we never expected.

Because He is worth the journey. And He still invites us to follow.

With gratitude,

Yes Scott! I want to partner with you and NDE to proclaim the Gospel to families!
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December 5, 2025