What does Tribe teach about counting the cost?
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 counting the cost is anchored in a single conviction that Brian said the Holy Spirit placed on his heart during the Turn the Cat Around series: Brian says, "The leadership of Jesus will be less complicated but more costly." That phrase is not offered as a warning to discourage people but as an honest orientation toward what genuine discipleship demands. The idea is that following Jesus simplifies the question of who is in charge while raising the personal stakes of actually doing what he asks.
Brian grounded this in 2 Timothy 4:1-5, where Paul writes to Timothy as a father figure preparing a younger leader for what is coming. The passage describes a time when people will turn away from sound teaching toward teachers who tell them what they want to hear, and Brian pointed to the Greek word for time there as carrying the weight of a God-appointed moment rather than ordinary clock time. Counting the cost, in this framing, is bound up with staying sober-minded and enduring when the easier path is to follow something more comfortable.
The congregation's own stories from the series gave that teaching texture. Colleen's public act of repentance, Clay stepping away from alcohol under conviction, Kat pushing past pride to share her testimony, and more than twenty people giving their lives to the Lord were all held up not as tidy wins but as evidence that individual obedience carries a ripple effect through the whole body. Brian also read from Ezekiel, where the Lord says, "I don't want you to die, says the Sovereign Lord. Turn back and live." The cost is real, but the invitation behind it is life.
Taught from 2 Timothy 4:1-5 · 2 Timothy 4:7 · Ezekiel 18:31 · Ezekiel 18:23
“I don't want you to die, says the Sovereign Lord. Turn back and live.”
From TTCA Week 9 Wrap Up
The passage taught · 2 Timothy 4:1-5
1 I command you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom:
2 preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all patience and teaching.
3 For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts;
4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn away to fables.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- May 1, 2023 TTCA Week 9 Wrap Up Brian Hunter wraps up the "Turn the Cat Around" series, exploring what it costs to follow Jesus faithfully as culture drifts further from biblical truth.