What does Tribe teach about change in church?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on change in church starts with Jesus's own images: new wine poured into old wineskins, and a patch of new cloth sewn onto an old garment. Brian walked the congregation through those pictures not as scattered illustrations but as a deliberate parable about what happens when God moves in a new way and existing structures cannot hold it. The fermenting, expanding nature of new wine is the point. A rigid, routine-bound church structure simply cannot contain the Holy Spirit moving freely, and when it tries, something breaks.
Brian drew a distinction between what new wine means specifically and what it means generally. Specifically, it is the new covenant Jesus came to establish, a way of being made right with God through faith rather than through keeping the law's requirements. He pointed to Matthew 5:17 and Romans 3 to show that Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and that this teaching was so disruptive it got both Jesus and Paul killed. Generally, the new wine represents any new way God is moving. The rest of the congregation's world, Brian observed, is still reaching for the old wine of tradition, legalism, and work-based religion. As Brian put it, "The rest of the world is drinking old wine. The old wine of what? Tradition, legalism, the law, work-based things."
The congregation also sat honestly with Luke's closing line, that no one who has been drinking old wine wants the new, because they say the old is better. That raised a real question in the room, and Brian held it rather than resolving it too quickly. Part of the answer that came out of the conversation was that without the Holy Spirit, a person simply cannot see clearly enough to recognize or want what God is doing. Brian noted that Scripture does not change a person just by being heard. As he said, "It is not until God's word makes that 18 inches drop from your thinker into your knower that it has any ability to change your life." Engaging with the text together, reading it, questioning it, and restating it, is part of how that movement happens.
Taught from Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · Romans 3:21-23 · Matthew 5:17 · Romans 8:1
“It is not until God's word makes that 18 inches drop from your thinker into your knower that it has any ability to change your life.”
From New Wine
The passage taught · Luke 5:33-39
33 They said to him, “Why do John’s disciples often fast and pray, likewise also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?”
34 He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then they will fast in those days.”
36 He also told a parable to them. “No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old garment, or else he will tear the new, and also the piece from the new will not match the old.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 11, 2024 New Wine Jesus explains new wine and new wineskins in Matthew 9 and Luke 5. Brian Hunter leads a conversation on what it means to receive the new things God is doing.
- November 10, 2024 What Does The New Wine Represent Brian Hunter walks through Jesus's words on new wine and old wineskins, asking what it looks like when God moves in new ways and whether we are ready to receive it.