What does Tribe teach about fear of change?
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 fear of change starts with an honest acknowledgment that holding on to old ways is not a neutral posture. Brian Hunter has walked the congregation through the parable of new wine and old wineskins across multiple weeks, and the central point is that a wineskin, meaning a person's capacity to receive a new move of God, does not stretch for free. It costs something. That cost is the death of old mindsets, old patterns, and preconceived notions, and Brian has been direct that anything not crucified will keep resurfacing.
The warning Brian draws from John 8 is concrete and personal. He was careful to point out that Jesus gave it not to obvious religious opponents but to people who already believed in him, which makes it harder to hold at arm's length. The crowd in that chapter started with a reasonable question and ended trying to stone Jesus, and Brian traced that escalation as a picture of what an old wineskin does under pressure. It does not simply resist. It splits, and when it splits, both the skin and the wine are lost. Brian puts it plainly: "If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past."
The other thread running through this teaching comes from the Moses and disciples passages Brian preached in the park in August. In both stories, the person who encounters God is the one who moves toward the disruption rather than away from it. Moses said "I must go see" and turned aside. The disciples nearly missed Jesus on the water because their routines of thinking had hardened enough that they almost could not recognize him. Brian held up the rut itself as something worth examining, not as a moral failure but as a condition that can quietly cost a person the encounter they say they want.
Taught from Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · John 8:31-47 · Exodus 3:1-12 · Mark 6:45-52
“If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past.”
From A Warning About New Wine
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds,
5 throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 9, 2024 A Warning About New Wine Brian Hunter warns that clinging to old mindsets when God pours out something new risks losing both the old and the new. A sermon on John 8 and wineskins.
- December 8, 2024 Warnings About New Wine Jesus warns that clinging to old mindsets blocks what God is doing now. This sermon explores what it costs to receive something new from him.
- August 26, 2024 Resisting the Rut Brian Hunter uses Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to show how God meets us in disruption, not routine, if we turn aside to look.
- August 25, 2024 Resisting The Rut A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole dig into Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to explore what we miss when we stay stuck in a rut.