What does Tribe teach about depression?
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 depression does not start by naming the feeling and then offering coping strategies. It starts somewhere older. Brian Hunter points to 1 Samuel 16, where a tormenting spirit troubled Saul and David played the harp and the spirit left, and he draws a straight line from that ancient moment to what people carry today. Many people sense something dogging them without ever naming it spiritually. Brian's argument is that worship can function like a weapon against exactly that kind of darkness, and that pressing into it is not a religious exercise but a form of combat.
The framework Brian uses separates thanksgiving, praise, and worship as three distinct things, and worship in particular is what happens when a person encounters the presence of God himself. That distinction matters here because the teaching is not that positive thinking or gratitude will lift a person out of depression. It is that something changes in the actual presence of God. Brian says, "In his presence is fullness of joy. There can be no darkness in his presence." A woman in the congregation backed this up with a firsthand account: on October 7, while in Israel, she and her husband began singing a worship song about being surrounded, and peace came over them even as reports of violence were coming in around them.
The broader point Brian makes is that every human being already worships something because God built that mechanism into us. Before a person knows Jesus, that devotion tends to settle on the self, and when the self is the highest authority, its brokenness gets hidden because, as Brian puts it, you cannot worship a broken god. Depression can live and grow in that hidden place. The teaching at Tribe is that worship, real encounter with the presence of God, is one of the tools available for fighting back.
Taught from 1 Samuel 16:14-23 · 1 Samuel 30:1-8 · Psalm 91 · Psalm 150
“Everybody does it. Few people know that they do it.”
From Three Uses of Worship
The passage taught · 1 Samuel 16:14-23
14 Now Yahweh’s Spirit departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh troubled him.
15 Saul’s servants said to him, “See now, an evil spirit from God troubles you.
16 Let our lord now command your servants who are in front of you to seek out a man who is a skillful player on the harp. Then when the evil spirit from God is on you, he will play with his hand, and you will be well.”
17 Saul said to his servants, “Provide me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- June 9, 2025 Three Uses of Worship Brian Hunter walks through Psalm 150 and three reasons to worship God through song: as a weapon in combat, a tool for recalibration, and a response to celebration.
- June 8, 2025 Worship in the Key of C A Wyoming pastor explores worship as more than singing, walking through Scripture to show how praise can be used for combat, calibration, and celebration.