What does Tribe teach about repentance?
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 repentance starts with a simple, unflinching premise: God does not change, so we are the ones who have to turn around. Brian Hunter has returned to this idea across multiple series, grounding it in Ezekiel 18, where God says plainly that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and that his desire is for people to turn from their ways and live. The series title 'Turn the Cat Around' came from a phrase a pastor Brian and Lissa sat under in Tulsa used to say: if the truth pets your fur the wrong way, you do not ask God to adjust his direction, you turn your cat around. Brian puts it simply: 'God doesn't change. So you better.'
The teaching is careful not to reduce repentance to guilt or self-improvement. In the Revelation 2 and 3 letters, Brian pointed out that Jesus never hammers a church and walks away. The pattern in every letter is honest diagnosis followed immediately by a remedy the church could never afford on its own. The act of turning, of surrender, is itself what unlocks what Jesus is offering. As Brian put it, 'the very act of repentance and surrender is turning the cat around. And that is what purchases the costly items.' That gap between an honest look at where you actually are and the costly cure Jesus provides is where the real work happens.
Jay Cummings brought this same idea to the ground level in his teaching from John 21, where Jesus meets Peter after the resurrection and calls him Simon, not Peter, naming where he actually was rather than who he had been called to become. Jay's point, drawn from his own story, was that the people who most often miss their need to turn are not the obviously lost. They are people who are close to God, who know the language, who have been around a long time. Repentance, both Brian and Jay have taught, involves confessing known sin, but the harder part is inviting God, and trusted people in your life, to show you what you cannot yet see in yourself.
Taught from Ezekiel 18:23-32 · Revelation 2:1-5 · 1 John 1:9 · John 21:15-19 · Psalm 32
“Your stance today is the least expensive that it will be in your life.”
From The Feast of Trumpets： A Rehearsal for What's Coming
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 15:51-52
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- October 6, 2025 The Feast of Trumpets： A Rehearsal for What's Coming Brian Hunter walks Tribe through God's fall feasts, showing how the feast of trumpets, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot point to Jesus' return and reign.
- 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.
- March 27, 2023 Turn the Cat around Week 6 A ski instructor shares how God rebuilt his life from the ground up, and a Wyoming congregation reflects on what it means to stop running from God and turn around.
- March 20, 2023 Turn Your Cat Around A Wyoming church works through a sermon series on staying aligned with God, covering how we let sin in, believe lies, compromise, and live in defiance of his word.
- March 6, 2023 Turn Your Cat Around Brian Hunter walks Tribe through 2 Kings 5, showing how Naaman's pride nearly cost him his healing and why letting go of the how, where, and what-ifs still matters today.
- February 20, 2023 Turn the Cat Around Week 1 - Turn and Live A Wyoming congregation wrestles with Ezekiel 18, the Asbury revival, and what it costs to stop asking God to change and turn your own heart around instead.
Mentioned along the way
- May 31, 2026 God Will Not Be Mocked A Wyoming pastor leads his congregation in honest reflection on God's discipline, Israel's calling, and why he's asking his church to pray for Israel this June.
- August 3, 2025 Turn And Live Brian Hunter opens a series on eternity, walking through scripture on judgment, heaven, and hell to show why how we live now shapes the reward awaiting us.
- February 26, 2024 Do You Love Me More Than These Jay Cummings preaches on spiritual transformation at Tribe Church in Jackson Hole, exploring what it truly means to love Jesus and live a changed life.
- February 25, 2024 Transformation (Do You Love Me) A young man's rock-bottom moment in Texas led to a real encounter with Jesus. This sermon explores what genuine transformation looks like and what it costs.