Preaching 101 – Back to Basics

In 1959, the legendary Vince Lombardi, was hired to be the head coach of the Green Bay Packers with the difficult task of turning around a losing franchise.

The legend goes that after a miserable showing, the players gathered in the locker room  in silence waiting for Lombardi to enter and give them the verbal beating of their lives.

After a few moments, Lombardi entered the room with a football in his hands. He stood in silence, searching for words. The players braced themselves for the worst.

Lombardi lifted the football and broke the silence with arguably the most legendary quote in NFL history, “Gentlemen, this is a football!”

He then proceeded to explain the boundaries a football field, the goal line, and how putting the ball across the goal line scores 6 points.

Those five legendary words marked Lombardi’s legacy as a coach. He would take his team back to the basics. He would demand perfection in the fundamentals of the game.

After years of losing, Lombardi took the Packers to win 5 championships in 7 years (including Super Bowl I and II).

In fact, Packers never had a losing season under Lombardi. He is regarded as the greatest coach of all time. He left such a legacy that the Super Bowl Trophy is named the Lombardi Trophy.

All of this because Lombardi took his struggling team back to the basics.

Many of us could learn from Lombardi. We need to get back to the basics. We need to refocus on the fundamentals.

As a young preacher, you will be tempted to ignore the fundamentals because you never learned them properly as a foundation for your preaching.

As an old preacher, you will have a tendency to drift away from the fundamentals because you are so experienced.

So no matter where you are on your journey a pastor, you are never beyond going back to on the basics.

Because of this, over the course of the next month (or however long it takes) I will be writing a Preaching 101 series of posts.

Together we will walk through the basic fundamentals of preaching, because I need it just as much as anybody else.

If we want to have a winning season of preaching, we need to get back to the basics.

Gentlemen, this is a Bible.

Are you with me?

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More from this series:

• Preaching 101 – Back to Basics
• What Does The Bible Say About Preaching?
• Before You Practice Preaching, Practice What You Preach
• How to Write a Sermon – 7 Steps to a Memorable Message (Step 1)
• How to Write a Sermon – 7 Steps to a Memorable Message (Step 2)
• How to Write a Sermon – 7 Steps to a Memorable Message (Step 3)