What does Tribe teach about singing?
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 singing starts with the conviction that it is a discipline before it is a feeling. Lissa Hunter was direct about this in the May teaching: even leading from the stage requires intentionally removing distractions and opening your mouth before the emotion arrives. The anchor text was Psalm 100, and the word the leaders kept returning to was gladness, described from the Hebrew as a thankfulness that rises from within and solicits a response. The point is that a genuine encounter with God cannot leave a person unmoved, and singing is one of the places that response takes shape.
Several voices from the congregation filled that out in concrete ways. One person said he memorizes simple praise songs and sings them first thing in the morning before he even wants to, and his feelings follow. Renee said the Lord does not hear your voice, he hears your heart, and that singing truth repeatedly will eventually break things off even when you do not feel what you are singing. The congregation in the Philippines was held up as an example, where the instruments were a mess and the chickens were loose, and the presence of the Lord was as strong as anywhere Lissa had ever been. The outward conditions were beside the point.
The teaching also pressed into why singing and anxiety tend to crowd each other out. One of the sharpest lines from the morning was this: "Singing and worry cannot exist in the same space." That is not a promise that good feelings will follow immediately, but it is a reason to begin anyway. The underlying conviction is that worship is not a mood-dependent slot in a church service. Drawing on a definition from Louie Giglio, the teaching framed it this way: follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance, and at the end of that trail you will find a throne. Whatever is on that throne is what you worship. Singing is one of the ways a person reorients that throne toward God, and it starts by opening the mouth.
Taught from Psalm 100:1-5 · Hebrews 13:15 · Psalm 51:12
“Singing and worry cannot exist in the same space.”
From Worship Is a Sacrifice
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 9:6-8
6 Remember this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
7 Let each man give according as he has determined in his heart; not grudgingly, or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.
8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that you, always having all sufficiency in everything, may abound to every good work.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- May 6, 2024 Worship Is a Sacrifice Tribe's worship team leads a congregation-wide conversation on what it really means to worship, from singing and Scripture to giving and daily obedience.
- May 5, 2024 The Ways We Worship A Jackson Hole congregation talks honestly about what worship really means, covering singing, sitting under Scripture, and giving as three connected acts of devotion.