What does Tribe teach about lukewarm faith?
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 lukewarm faith starts with an honest look at what fire reveals. Brian Hunter used the California wildfires as an entry point into 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul describes every person's life as a building. The foundation is already set, Jesus Christ, but the materials stacked on top of it are the question. Gold, silver, and jewels survive the fire. Wood, hay, and straw burn away. The difference between them is not visible in the moment of construction. It only becomes clear when fire passes through. Brian told a story about a young man called Cowboy Greg who welded a broken part back together, and the old ranch foreman who then held it over his head and slammed it on the ground ten times to test whether the weld would hold. That, Brian said, is not cruelty. It is the only honest evaluation of whether the work holds.
Revelation 3 came in alongside that, with Jesus speaking to the church in Laodicea, a church that was neither cold nor hot. The letters Brian walked through in Revelation follow a consistent pattern: Jesus names what is going well, then names what is wrong, then gives an invitation to repent. He is not evaluating from a distance. Brian pointed out that the image in Revelation 1 is Jesus standing in the middle of the lampstands, actively tending them, trimming wicks, adding oil, closely inspecting each one. The lukewarm church is not being abandoned. It is being examined by someone who is right there.
The remedy Brian kept pointing toward is not self-improvement. It is encounter. He said that Brian says, "It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus." Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego went into the furnace, and it was only inside the fire that they found the fourth man. The word in Isaiah 43 is "when," not "if," and it is "walk," not sprint. God does not promise to pull his people out before the process is finished. He promises to be present through it, and that presence is where a lukewarm faith either gets refined or gets exposed for what it was.
Taught from 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 · Revelation 3:15-18 · Isaiah 43:1-4 · Psalm 23:4 · James 4:7
“It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus.”
From Tested by Fire
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 3:1-15
1 Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
2 I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
3 for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- January 13, 2025 Tested by Fire A sermon on walking through fire without being consumed, drawing on Isaiah 43, 1 Corinthians 3, and the California wildfires to ask what we are building our lives with.
- January 12, 2025 The Fourth Man in the Fire A Wyoming pastor and congregation explore what it means to walk through fire, drawing on Isaiah 43 and 1 Corinthians 3 to ask what we are truly building our lives out of.
Mentioned along the way
- April 17, 2023 TTCA WEEK 7 Wrap Up Brian Hunter walks through Jesus' letters to seven churches in Revelation, asking what it looks like when a congregation finally turns and faces the right direction.