What does Tribe teach about identity?
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 identity starts with a simple but loaded question: whose label of who you are is actually true? Brian Hunter has returned to this question across multiple messages, and the consistent answer is that only the creator has the authority to define his creation. He used the image of a child's Play-Doh artwork to press the point, noting that a parent who calls it a giraffe when the child made a skyscraper is simply wrong, no matter how convincing the resemblance. The artist alone gets to name what they made. Brian drew the same line from Isaiah 29:16, where the prophet asks whether the clay has the right to tell the potter he did not make it.
The Gideon story in Judges 6 is the passage Brian keeps returning to when he teaches on identity. Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding, certain he is the smallest person from the weakest clan. The angel of the Lord greets him as a mighty man of valor. Brian held both descriptions in view and argued that God was speaking from a higher level of truth, the way the law of aerodynamics overrides gravity without canceling it. The point is not that Gideon's fear was imaginary, but that God's word about a person carries more weight than the circumstances that person is standing in. The same thread runs through John 21, where Jesus addresses a directionless Peter by his birth name Simon and asks, in effect, whether he is going to be Simon the fisherman who retreats to his nets when life gets hard, or Peter, the one Jesus has named and called.
Brian has also connected identity directly to the loneliness a lot of people carry but cannot explain. He said that when he finally asked God about a persistent loneliness from his own early twenties in Estes Park, the answer that came back was that it was tied to not yet knowing his identity and purpose. That connection is part of what drives the teaching here: a shaky or false sense of who you are does not stay abstract. It shows up as aimlessness, as retreating to what is comfortable, as fishing all night and catching nothing. The invitation the teaching keeps extending is to let God's word about who you are be the hook everything else hangs on, because, as Brian put it, "God's hook is always the most reliable hook you can ever hang any belief you have in the entire universe."
Taught from Judges 6:11-16 · John 21 · Isaiah 29:16 · 1 John 3:1 · Ephesians 1:4-5
The passage taught · 1 John 3:1
1 See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- May 17, 2026 Mighty Man of Valor Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6 to show how God named Gideon a mighty warrior before he had done anything, and what that means for how we see ourselves.
- July 22, 2024 Paradise Without Purpose Is Prison Brian Hunter explores loneliness through John 21, showing how Peter's emptiness points to a deeper hunger for identity and purpose that only Jesus can fill.
- July 21, 2024 A Message For... Brian Hunter speaks from John 21 about how loneliness often points not to isolation but to a missing sense of identity and purpose, and how Jesus restores both.
- June 17, 2024 Hang Your Hat on the Biggest Hook Brian Hunter uses a coat rack and hats to explore how our beliefs need to hang on hooks strong enough to bear the weight of truth, rooted in God's word.
Mentioned along the way
- June 7, 2026 Go With The Strength You Have Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6, Exodus 31, Esther and Acts 9 to show how God puts his supernatural power on your natural abilities to fulfill your calling.
- August 18, 2024 Jesus In The Wilderness Amanda Lack walks through Jesus in the wilderness, looking at his three temptations and what they teach us about identity, trust, and how to endure hard seasons.