What does Tribe teach about complexity?
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 complexity starts with a conviction Brian has carried into 2024: that God never lets a complex situation arrive without also placing clarity inside it. The image he reaches for is a gift bag. The tissue paper is always more visible than the present, but the present is always there. As Brian puts it, "There will never be a gift bag full of lots of tissue paper complexity that God does not place a beautiful present of clarity in there." The complexity is real, and he does not minimize it. With over forty countries holding major elections in 2024 and world affairs as unsettled as they are, he told the congregation it would not take a prophet to imagine this being the most complex year many of them have walked through. But that observation is the setup, not the conclusion.
Brian draws on John 18, the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, to show what it looks like to find clarity inside a genuinely chaotic moment. Soldiers, a betrayal, a sword swung by an untrained fisherman, a cosmic moment almost no one present understood. He asks what lens each person in that scene was using, because the lens determines what you can see. The soldiers saw a criminal. Peter saw a threat. Jesus, John says, fully realized what was coming upon him. Brian's point is that the lens matters more than the circumstances, and the right lens is one shaped by who God actually is, not just by what God appears to be doing in a given moment.
In the earlier message in this series, Brian draws the same line through Habakkuk and Isaiah. He describes Israel as a people who knew God's acts, while Moses knew God's character, and says the goal for the Tribe family is to respond to complexity the way Moses did, leaning into who God is rather than being swept along by circumstances. The clarity Brian is pointing toward is not the removal of hard things. It is the kind of settled knowledge of God that holds even when the situation stays complicated.
Taught from John 18:1-14 · Habakkuk 3:1-4 · Isaiah 43:10-13 · Isaiah 35:1-8 · Isaiah 46:3-4
“All other ground is sinking sand.”
From The Lens, the Light, and the Landscape
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing.”
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
21 For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 19, 2024 The Lens, the Light, and the Landscape Brian Hunter walks through John 18 to show how the right lens, light, and footing in Jesus bring clarity when life gets complicated and overwhelming.
- January 21, 2024 Clarity In Complexity Part 2 A Wyoming pastor draws on Habakkuk and Isaiah to show how worship brings clarity when life grows complex, pointing to signs of Christ's return along the way.