What does Tribe teach about repentance?
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 repentance starts with a picture borrowed from everyday life: a cat that only tolerates being petted one way. If God's truth is rubbing your life the wrong way, the answer is not to ask God to adjust. Brian Hunter, drawing from Ezekiel 18, frames repentance as the act of turning around to face the direction God is already moving. God is consistent with his own character, and that consistency is not stubbornness but the very thing that makes him trustworthy. The invitation in Ezekiel is not a threat but a plea. As Brian reads it, God is saying he takes no pleasure in the death of anyone who wanders, that his desire is for people to turn and live.
The series worked through what turning around actually looks like in practice. It is not self-improvement or trying harder in the same direction. Jay Cummings, speaking from his own story of a double life in high school and the wreckage that followed, pointed to the scene in John 21 where Jesus meets Peter on the shore and calls him Simon, not Peter, the name of who he used to be rather than who he was called to become. The three questions Jesus asks mirror the three denials, and Jay noted that the hardest people to reach with a call to repentance are not the obviously lost but the ones who are already close, who know the language and have been around long enough to confuse familiarity with health. Repentance, he said, involves not only confessing the sin you can see in yourself but inviting God, through Psalm 139, to show you what you cannot.
Brian returns to this theme across multiple series because he believes the cost of following Jesus is rising. He has said plainly, more than once, that "the leadership of Jesus in the days ahead will be less complicated, but more costly." That is why repentance is not presented at Tribe as a one-time transaction but as a practice to build into your life now, at what Brian calls the basement-bargain price level, before the stakes climb higher. The letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 show the same pattern every time: an honest diagnosis, then an immediate offer of something the church could never afford on its own. The gap between those two things is where repentance lives.
Taught from Ezekiel 18:23-32 · 1 John 1:8-9 · John 21:15-19 · Psalm 139:23-24 · Ezekiel 33:11
“Jesus didn't come to make bad people better. He came to transform us into something entirely new.”
From Do You Love Me More Than These
The passage taught · 1 John 1:8-9
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
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
The messages that teach on it
- February 26, 2024 Do You Love Me More Than These Jay Cummings preaches on spiritual transformation at Tribe Church in Jackson Hole, exploring what it truly means to love Jesus and live a changed life.
- February 25, 2024 Transformation (Do You Love Me) A young man's rock-bottom moment in Texas led to a real encounter with Jesus. This sermon explores what genuine transformation looks like and what it costs.
- April 17, 2023 TTCA WEEK 7 Wrap Up Brian Hunter walks through Jesus' letters to seven churches in Revelation, asking what it looks like when a congregation finally turns and faces the right direction.
- March 27, 2023 Turn the Cat around Week 6 A ski instructor shares how God rebuilt his life from the ground up, and a Wyoming congregation reflects on what it means to stop running from God and turn around.
- February 20, 2023 Turn the Cat Around Week 1 - Turn and Live A Wyoming congregation wrestles with Ezekiel 18, the Asbury revival, and what it costs to stop asking God to change and turn your own heart around instead.
Mentioned along the way
- May 31, 2026 God Will Not Be Mocked A Wyoming pastor leads his congregation in honest reflection on God's discipline, Israel's calling, and why he's asking his church to pray for Israel this June.
- October 6, 2025 The Feast of Trumpets： A Rehearsal for What's Coming Brian Hunter walks Tribe through God's fall feasts, showing how the feast of trumpets, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot point to Jesus' return and reign.
- August 3, 2025 Turn And Live Brian Hunter opens a series on eternity, walking through scripture on judgment, heaven, and hell to show why how we live now shapes the reward awaiting us.
- March 20, 2023 Turn Your Cat Around A Wyoming church works through a sermon series on staying aligned with God, covering how we let sin in, believe lies, compromise, and live in defiance of his word.
- March 6, 2023 Turn Your Cat Around Brian Hunter walks Tribe through 2 Kings 5, showing how Naaman's pride nearly cost him his healing and why letting go of the how, where, and what-ifs still matters today.