What does Tribe teach about change and transition?

At Tribe, the teaching on change and transition starts with a simple conviction: God is the one doing the leading. In the message Pastor Brian Hunter brought on the last Sunday the church met at the TMC, he walked through Exodus 13 and the image of Israel being guided through the wilderness not by the shortest road but by a longer, harder one. The point he kept pressing was that the circuitous route was not a mistake or a punishment. It served real purposes: protection, development, and time for the people to grow into what was ahead of them. Brian was honest that his own first instinct when God seems to be steering him away from where he wants to go is to throw a fit, and that learning to say thank you for the long way around is a mark of genuine maturity.

The central image Brian returned to again and again was the cloud, the shade it cast in a treeless wilderness where the sun was brutal, the warmth and light of the pillar of fire at night. Being under that cloud allowed Israel to do things they never would have attempted on their own. He connected that to what the congregation has today, the Holy Spirit, as the presence that makes possible what seems impossible or unnatural under our own strength. If the fear of missing God's timing feels like a weight, Brian named that fear directly: "You can never step back into the shade because you've missed it and you've blown it. Let me tell you that is a lie of the devil."

Underlying all of it is a posture of trust. Brian reminded the congregation that "God knows you better than you know yourself," and that the harder route is chosen by someone who sees more than we do and stays with us through it. The message did not minimize the difficulty of transition; it held it honestly and kept pointing back to the One who holds the lead.

Taught from Exodus 13:17-22 · Isaiah 63:11-14 · 2 Thessalonians 3:16 · Philippians 4:6 · Galatians 5