What does Tribe teach about purpose in life?
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 purpose in life starts with a distinction that Brian Hunter draws carefully: identity and calling are not the same question. Identity is who God says you are. Calling is what you were born to do. Brian's concern is that most people collapse those two things, along with gifts, vocation, and ministry, into one blurry idea, and that muddle makes it hard to hear any of them clearly. Working through Gideon's story in Judges 6, he pointed out that God spoke Gideon's identity over him before commissioning him, and that a calling always has a direction built into it. You cannot move toward your calling without actually moving. The power in a calling, one Tribe member put it plainly during the conversation, comes from obedience to something you did not choose for yourself.
But purpose at Tribe is also inseparable from self-denial, and Brian does not soften that. In Luke 9, Jesus tells the crowd that anyone who wants to follow him must take up their cross daily. The line Brian kept returning to was verse 24: if you try to hang on to your life you will lose it, but if you give up your life for his sake you will save it. He named the cultural pull in the other direction honestly. Society, he said, has pushed God so far to the margins that the self has filled the space, and the entire vocabulary of self-help, self-fulfillment, and self-expression points to that same replacement. Brian says, "We've pushed God so far into the margins that we have created this god shaped vacuum in the human heart."
What the congregation arrived at together is that finding your purpose is not a self-discovery project. It involves relinquishing things: the right to author your own story, the right to hold a grudge, the right to care what other people think. And in that relinquishment something changes. Brian says, "When you exchange your life for Jesus and you lay down your life and you relinquish the right to happiness, it gets exchanged for joy."
Taught from Luke 9:18-27 · Judges 6:11-16 · Philippians 3:3-11 · 1 Corinthians 9:16 · Acts 26:16-18
“If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.”
From Losing Your Life to Find It
The passage taught · Luke 9:18-27
18 As he was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do the multitudes say that I am?”
19 They answered, “‘John the Baptizer,’ but others say, ‘Elijah,’ and others, that one of the old prophets is risen again.”
20 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”
21 But he warned them, and commanded them to tell this to no one,
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 16, 2026 Losing Your Life to Find It Jesus said to gain your life you must lose it. Brian Hunter explores what it really means to lay down your rights and exchange self-rule for something far better.
- May 24, 2026 Your Calling: The Clue of the Callus A Wyoming pastor walks through Judges 6 and other Bible stories to help listeners discover their God-given calling and tell it apart from identity, gifts, and job.