What does Tribe teach about backsliding?

At Tribe, the teaching on backsliding starts with an honest look at who it actually happens to. In the message from John 21, Jay made the point that sliding back into old ways is not just a danger for people who were never close to Jesus. The disciples themselves, told to wait for him in Galilee, had already drifted back to fishing when he found them on the shore. Peter, the one who had sworn he would die for Christ, was the one Jesus had to ask three times whether he loved him.

Jay drew attention to the way Jesus addresses Peter in that conversation, calling him Simon rather than Peter, the name that carried his old identity before he met Jesus. The suggestion was that the name change was not accidental. A person can be near the church, know the right things, and still quietly become who they used to be. The question Jesus asks, whether Peter loves him more than the fish and the boats and the life he had gone back to, is the same question Jay said the people closest to the church most need to sit with.

The teaching also held space for honesty about where a person actually is. Peter, once boastful, could no longer claim the kind of love he had once promised. He answered with something smaller and truer. Jay presented that moment not as failure but as the beginning of genuine transformation, the point where a person stops performing and gets honest with God about what they have and have not become.

Taught from John 21:15-19 · 1 John 1:8-9 · 2 Corinthians 5:17 · Ephesians 4:22-24 · Psalm 139:23-24