What does Tribe teach about new year?
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 the new year starts not with resolutions but with a reckoning. Before moving forward, Brian asks the church to look honestly at where their hope actually sat over the past year, not where they hoped it was, but where it really rested. The Hebrew behind the phrase 'put your hope in the Lord' pictures a rope being braided and twisted together, the way a ski lift haul line is spliced so completely that the joint is nearly invisible. That image is the standard. Hope placed in God is meant to be that tightly woven into His promises, not anchored in a good season, a relationship, or a financial break.
The verse Tribe has carried as a guidepost, Psalm 37:34, calls people to travel steadily along God's path, and Brian traces 'travel steadily' to Hebrew words for watching, observing, and being on guard. This is not passive waiting. He calls it finish-line waiting, the kind that actually changes the person doing it. The congregation has named what that has looked like in practice: years of looking at facilities that did not work out, planting in a town described as a graveyard of church plants, fasting and praying for Israel, moving into the Virginia. None of it looked spectacular from the inside. As Brian says, 'Sometimes it takes the Lord a long time to act suddenly.'
The direction that has run underneath all of it is simply to stay close. Brian has admitted that for someone wired as a visionary leader, that is a hard word to run on. The church has felt the friction of washing cars and sanding floors while wanting something more obviously significant. But the teaching at Tribe holds that God does not hide things from His people carelessly. As Brian puts it, 'God doesn't hide things from us. He hides things for us.' Traveling steadily along His path means trusting that the slow and ordinary work of a year is exactly where He is building something.
Taught from Psalm 37:34 · Romans 8:1 · 1 John 1:9 · Proverbs 3:5 · Proverbs 3:6
“Sometimes it takes the Lord a long time to act suddenly.”
From Travel Steady Along His Path
The passage taught · 1 John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 1, 2024 Travel Steady Along His Path Brian Hunter reflects on Psalm 37:34 with his congregation, reviewing how Tribe Church pursued steadfastness in 2023 and what it means to travel steady along God's path.
- January 9, 2023 Travel Steady Along His Path： A Word for Tribe 2023 Pastor Brian Hunter walks through Psalm 37:34, asking Tribe fam where their hope really rests and what it means to travel steadily along God's path into 2023.