What does Tribe teach about generosity?
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 generosity starts with a simple observation Brian Hunter makes: Jesus talks about finances more in the gospels than he talks about hell, and that is not an accident. Jesus understands the connection between where our money goes and where our hearts actually are. Brian puts it plainly: giving disciplines the flesh and reflects the heart. The conversation at Tribe is not about church fundraising. It is about a spiritual discipline tied directly to love, trust, and surrender.
Brian draws three anchors from scripture. The first is love. Using Luke 7, where Jesus says the person forgiven much loves much, Brian presses on the Pharisees as the intended audience. They had constructed a false moral accounting system that told them they were basically fine, and that system produced very little love. The corrective is an honest reckoning with how much each of us has actually been forgiven. Brian says, "Giving reflects our heart and is a practical way of expressing our love for Jesus." The second anchor is trust. Brian works through Matthew 6, where Jesus moves from treasure stored on earth versus heaven into the familiar verses about worry, and finally to seeking the kingdom first. The point, as the congregation worked out together, is that all of those verses trace back to money. Giving trains the heart to trust Jesus with every area of life, not just the parts that feel safer to hand over. The third anchor is giving Jesus something to work with, drawn from John 6, where five loaves and two fish become twelve baskets of leftovers.
Brian also draws a thread from Deuteronomy 16, where God does not set a fixed amount but instead asks for a voluntary offering in proportion to how he has blessed you. That structure forces a person to actually think through their blessings before they respond. He uses the image of a child choosing which cookie to hand to their mom, noting that a good parent uses that moment to train generosity, and that God is doing exactly the same thing. At Tribe, generosity is taught as something that forms us, not just something we perform.
Taught from Matthew 6:19-34 · Luke 7:47 · John 6:5-13 · Deuteronomy 16:9-12 · Matthew 6:19-21
“There's a difference between belief and trust.”
From Three Aspects of Tithing
The passage taught · Isaiah 53
1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.
4 Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- July 14, 2025 Three Aspects of Tithing Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 6 and Luke 7 to show why giving reflects love and trust in God, not just a church budget line.
- July 13, 2025 Love, Trust, and Something to Work With Brian Hunter explores tithing as an act of love and trust, drawing from Matthew 6 and John 6 to show how giving reflects the heart and invites God to act.
- June 10, 2024 Following the Holy Spirit Brian Hunter closes a six-week series on walking in the Spirit, tracing the feast of Shavuot, the book of Ruth, and what it really means to follow where the Holy Spirit leads.
- June 9, 2024 The Festival of Shavuot Brian Hunter walks through Deuteronomy 16, the book of Ruth, and Acts 2 to show what it actually looks like to follow the Holy Spirit rather than your own instincts.
Mentioned along the way
- October 31, 2022 Happy Birthday Tribe! Tribe Church in Jackson Hole marks its sixth birthday by studying 1 Chronicles 17, where David learns that God builds the house, not the other way around.