What does Tribe teach about change and transition?
Drawn from the message 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 change and transition starts with who is actually doing the leading. In the message preached on the last Sunday the church met at the TMC, Pastor Brian Hunter worked through Exodus 13, where God leads Israel out of Egypt not by the shortest road but by a longer, harder route through the wilderness. Brian pointed out that the text repeats the word for leading or guiding at least three times in just a few verses, and said that repetition is not accidental. The circuitous route was not a mistake or a punishment. It served real purposes: protection, development, and giving the people time to learn what they would need for what was ahead. Brian was honest that his own instinct when he senses God pulling him away from where he wants to go is to throw a fit, and that being able to say thank you for the long way around is a mark of growing maturity.
The central image Brian kept returning to was the pillar of cloud that traveled with Israel. In a region with almost no trees and a brutal sun, the cloud gave shade. At night the pillar of fire gave warmth and enough light to travel. Being under that cloud allowed Israel to do things they never would have attempted on their own, including moving through the desert in the dark. That shade was not something they manufactured. It was something they stayed under. Brian connected that cloud to the Holy Spirit, what the church has today in place of the visible pillar, and framed Tribe's own move as a moment to ask the same question Israel faced: are we staying under God's leading, or are we trying to find our own route?
One of the sharpest things Brian said addressed the guilt that can come when someone feels they have drifted out from under that shade and cannot find their way back. Brian says, "You can never step back into the shade because you've missed it and you've blown it. Let me tell you that is a lie of the devil." The teaching is that God's guidance is not a window that closes the moment you hesitate. He also offered what sounds like a word straight from the leadership of Tribe to the congregation in this season: "Greater than our sentimentality, greater than our fear of change is our great love for you and fear of you." The call, across all of it, is simply to stay in the shade.
Taught from Exodus 13:17-22 · Isaiah 63:11-14 · 2 Thessalonians 3:16 · Galatians 5 · Philippians 4:6
“You can never step back into the shade because you've missed it and you've blown it. Let me tell you that is a lie of the devil.”
From Stay in the Shade
The passage taught · 2 Thessalonians 3:16
16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with you all.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 3, 2026 Stay in the Shade Tribe church marks its last Sunday at the TMC with a message from Exodus 13 on following God's leading, just as Israel followed the cloud through the wilderness.