What does Tribe teach about surrendering control?
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 surrendering control starts with a concrete image: a wineskin has to come from an animal that died. Stone and clay jars cost nothing in terms of life, but the vessel that holds new wine only ever exists because something gave up its life to make it. Brian Hunter taught from Mark 10 that this is not accidental. The price of a new wineskin is death, and he was careful not to soften that into a metaphor.
Brian put two people from Mark 10 side by side to show what surrendering control looks like and what refusing it looks like. The rich young ruler had kept the commandments since childhood, and Jesus looked at him and loved him, then asked for one more thing: give it all away and follow me. The man could not do it. His wineskin had held the law of Moses well enough, but it could not stretch to hold what Jesus was actually offering. Bartimaeus, sitting in the very next story, threw aside his cloak, which was likely everything he owned, and ran toward Jesus without stopping to pick anything up. He asked for mercy rather than a transaction, and he left everything behind without hesitation. The contrast Brian drew was plain: one man's grip on what he had built was the thing that kept him from what Jesus was pouring out.
The broader series presses the same point from a different angle. Brian asked the congregation whether they had been quietly managing areas of their lives, controlling what they let the Spirit near, treating Sunday mornings as a ceiling rather than a baseline. The question was not whether a person was religious enough. The Pharisees in the earlier teaching had the same Torah as the disciples. What the disciples had that the Pharisees did not was a willingness to give up their lives and follow. Surrendering control, at Tribe, is taught as the condition for receiving anything new God wants to do, and the cost is always the same.
Taught from Mark 10:17-28 · Mark 10:46 · Luke 5:33-39 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 · Galatians 2:20
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-15
14 Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place.
15 For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- February 2, 2025 Two men enter, one man leaves. A Jackson Hole congregation wrestles with why the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead, what it means to taste vs. only see God's goodness, and how grace fuels daily surrender.
- November 24, 2024 It's Gonna Cost You A sermon on why following Jesus costs more than adding him to your life, told through the story of a rich young ruler and a blind beggar named Bartimaeus.
Mentioned along the way
- November 4, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface Brian Hunter preaches on looking beneath the surface of Jesus's nature, urging believers to build a faith big enough to hold all of who he is, not just the familiar parts.