About

The Short Story

Family, the arts, business, and theology punctuate Holt Vaughn’s story. He leads The Theology Project, a think tank to shape and elevate the Christian church’s view of theology. Visit www.thetheologyproject.com for videos by Dr. Ray Ortlund (Council Member The Gospel Coalition, canon theologian Anglican Church in North America, Pastor to Pastors/Immanuel Church), Jeff Meyer (Harvard Law J.D., Trustee Wheaton College, Baillie Lumber President), Dr. Jerry Gillis (Lead Pastor, The Chapel at CrossPoint) and other leaders.

Holt has written, produced and developed Bible curricula and devotional books for leading publishers and best-selling authors, used by thousands in churches and small groups around the globe. Serving as a teaching and preaching pastor in his early twenties he helped plant two churches. He’s also served some of the world’s largest ministry organizations, providing strategic and organizational consulting. However, the more work he did for a wide range of popular Christian authors, publishers, churches and denominations, the more need he saw in his own life and in the Church, for sound theology.

A work in progress, Holt can generally be found in his study surrounded by books, photos of his family, art of varied sorts, and guitars. Here he reads, writes expository sermons as a teaching elder in his local fellowship, works on book manuscripts and musical compositions, and assists others with life, ministry or business. Once a very long-haired rock guitarist, his latest album features Grammy, Gold Record and Dove Award musicians.

At age twenty-three, with about two hundred dollars, Holt created what would evolve into a group of successful award winning multimedia, content production, packaging and marketing communications companies, The Eastco Group. The company grew to over 11,000 square feet of state-of-the-art office, design, production and warehouse space, including California Road Studios, which was honored in Mix Magazine’s prestigious Class of 2008, as one of the world’s hottest new recording facilities. He has overseen countless projects for small business, Fortune companies, rock and pop stars and indie musicians, NY Times best-selling authors and leading not-for-profits.

In 2016 Holt successfully divested himself from The Eastco Group so he could devote more to The Theology Project. He is currently working on several new books and a new music album. He still does some consulting, as well as assisting others in the business of mergers and acquisitions through his work with TobinLeff.com. He resides on a nine-acre hill in Western New York delighting in God, his two adult children and the wife of his youth.

The Novel

“The more work I did for popular Christian authors, publishers and churches, the more need I saw in my own life and in the Church, for good sound theology.”

Hard work, creativity and business began early in life. Holt grew up on a small farm working summers in the fields and “tending the market” as a kid. His dad drove truck, worked on the farm, spent a couple years as a local business journalist and three decades as an electrician in a small manufacturing company. He always had a book on hand and encouraged a good vocabulary. Holt’s mostly stay-at-home mom was an artist and talented big band singer, worked as an executive assistant, was selected to compete for the Miss America Pageant in NY State, and raised five kids. At sixteen Holt found a talent for guitar. In six months, he was playing lead in his own psychedelic rock band, eventually giving lessons to over one hundred students, recording, and growing a huge head of hair.

Culture shock and disillusionment with the music industry came next. Holt left small-town life to attend the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston Massachusetts as a guitar performance major. Alone one day in his fourth-floor roach-infested room, he personally encountered the living Christ. Dramatically converted, and with almost zero knowledge of the Bible, Holt burst out of that room and preached the Christ he knew, to everyone he could. Remarkably, some people got saved and closet Christians repented and got bolder. For better or worse, Holt picked up the nickname “the tongue of God.”  Maybe predictably, some prayerful hippie-type believers took this big-haired wild man under their wing. For the next several years, Holt found himself in different places among good-hearted free ranging Pentecostal and evangelical camps.

With no Priscilla and Aquila to explain the way of God more adequately, Holt’s theology grew the hard way by experience. While ordained as a Pentecostal preacher (through his local church, who’s parent church was Assembly of God), his love of books led him down the path of redemptive history. There he gradually imbibed great scholars and theologians, drawing on the rich legacy of faithful interpreters of Scripture. Men like Augustine, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon and many more. This created theological and practical tensions within his own circles and eventually led him in new directions.

A lifelong learner, today Holt continues his pilgrimage. Having a longtime love for men like Whitefield and Wesley, he enjoys learning from the likes of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and J.I. Packer. It’s been said Lloyd-Jones held forth a religion of light and heat, combining Calvinism’s majestic vision of sovereignty with Methodism’s passionate preaching of repentance and regeneration.

Holt seeks to tell as many people as possible that Jesus is the I AM. He also desires to help people get on the path to sound theology. The sooner you are on that road, he says, you are saved from a world of heartache, heresy or both. It naturally leads to glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

PRESS PHOTOS

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