What does Tribe teach about fear of change?
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 fear of change starts with an honest admission: the instinct to hold onto what is familiar is deeply human, and God knows it. Brian Hunter has preached through this from two different angles. In the New Wine series, the warning came directly from Jesus himself, speaking not to obvious opponents but to people who already believed in him. The danger Brian kept returning to is not that someone rejects God outright, but that a person holds so tightly to old ways, old mindsets, and old patterns that there is simply no room left for a new movement of God. That kind of resistance does not just block what is new. Brian says, "If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past."
The cost of receiving something new is real, and Brian does not soften it. New wineskins are not free. They require the death of old ways of thinking, not tidying them up or setting them aside, but crucifying them. The flesh cannot be cast out, only put to death. And anything that does not get crucified keeps coming back. What John 8 makes plain is that resisting this process does not leave a person in a stable, comfortable place. The crowd in that chapter started with a reasonable question and ended the chapter reaching for stones. That escalation is what an old wineskin looks like under pressure from new wine.
The same thread ran through the outdoor message Brian preached in Miller Park. Moses had been doing the same work in the same pastures for forty years when the burning bush appeared right inside his rut. The disciples had watched miracle after miracle and still nearly missed Jesus walking toward them on the water because they were fixed in their expectations of how he moves. In both stories, the person who encounters God is the one who turns toward the disruption rather than away from it. The teaching at Tribe on fear of change is not that the fear is wrong, but that what is waiting on the other side of it is worth it. As Brian put it, "There is nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing that we can bring to the foot of the cross and crucify that we will not experience resurrection, abundant life on the other side."
Taught from John 8:31-47 · Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · Exodus 3:1-12 · Mark 6:45-52
“If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past.”
From A Warning About New Wine
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds,
5 throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 9, 2024 A Warning About New Wine Brian Hunter warns that clinging to old mindsets when God pours out something new risks losing both the old and the new. A sermon on John 8 and wineskins.
- December 8, 2024 Warnings About New Wine Jesus warns that clinging to old mindsets blocks what God is doing now. This sermon explores what it costs to receive something new from him.
- August 26, 2024 Resisting the Rut Brian Hunter uses Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to show how God meets us in disruption, not routine, if we turn aside to look.
- August 25, 2024 Resisting The Rut A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole dig into Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to explore what we miss when we stay stuck in a rut.