As our community enters a time of transition, stability matters deeply. While changes will inevitably come, this is a season in which we want to emphasize the unchanging and Biblical core of what makes us, us. In this series we will go back to fundamentals. The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi would famously begin every offseason by reintroducing his players to the most essential aspects of the game. “This is a football,” he was noted as saying at the opening session of training camp. So too would legendary basketball coach John Wooden begin his offseason workouts by training his players in such elementary concepts as the proper lacing of one’s shoes. Consider this our version of tying our shoes properly. Over the course of ten weeks we’ll walk through our five core identities, two messages per identity and remind ourselves of the essential, elementary … yes, core, things to which we desire to be faithful now and always.