Rules to Live Your Life By

(Honorary) Dr. John F. Tuttle, Jr.

District Superintendent

Far Right Oklahoma District

Church of the Nasterine

"Panhandling our hardest for Christ."

Dr. John F. Tuttle Jr. here, and at this special time of year, I’d like to share with all of you a quick list of changes I’d like to see immediately implemented at all churches on the Far Right Oklahoma District, for the sake of our fellowship and the kingdom:

1. I would like to see us be more welcoming and hospitable to people who look less like us: minorities, unwed teenage mothers, and especially the LGBTQ+ community.
2. Our understanding of Scripture has become far too fundamentalist and literal. I would like us to instead start thinking of Scripture as a living, breathing document that require careful exegesis and interpretation to understand how it might speak to our lives today. 
3. Speaking to both of the first two points, I would like to see us make a more concerted effort to partner with fellowships of different denominational backgrounds in our respective communities. After all, if we are supposed to be one body of Christ, shouldn’t we start acting like it and work together instead of seeing each other as competition? 
4. We as a denomination take the role of woman in ministry seriously and therefore should strive to maintain the dignity of and respect for our female colleagues in ministry as fellow sisters in Christ and fully qualified ministers of the gospel, and therefore I do not want to hear ANYONE say anything negative about the role of women in the Church or Society as a whole.
5. Shame is an ugly part of our fellowships, and it needs to stop. We are sinners saved by grace. Act like it.
6. Politics that use fear to ostracize and alienate people just because they seem different are antithetical to the Gospel message. Christ constantly called those on the margins inside instead of leaving them on the outside looking in. There’s room at the table for everyone. 
7. Church is about a way of life and sharing fellowship with one another, so let’s stop worrying about all the silly bean counting we do to try and reassure ourselves that it’s working. So please, stop keeping track of and measuring yourselves by attendance, how many people have joined the church, how many you’ve lead to Christ, and how many baptisms you’ve performed. Instead, focus on the work of the kingdom and trust God to provide. 
8. Violence has no place in the kingdom of God. If we are truly longing for the hastening of the day when God will beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, why are we carrying guns into our houses of worship? If you have one, you probably don’t need it on Sunday, and thinking you do speaks a lot louder than any words ever could. 
9. Theologically speaking, the Church of the Nasterine allows for a wide variance of belief with our theology, so please, stop fighting with one another about whether the earth is 6,000 years old and was created fully formed or whether an intelligent creator chose to work through the process of evolution to allow life to blossom and bloom into a form capable of responding to his love and goodness, and stop arguing about whether the future is determined, we have free will based on God’s knowledge of us, or the future is open to allow for genuine creational participation with God in shaping it. Those things, while important to us as individuals, matter much less on a larger scale, as long as we agree to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly together. 
10. Finally, we need to make more of an effort to look like Christ, a man who broke bread with sinners, condemned hypocrites, and invited outsiders in.

APRIL FOOLS,

Rock Doc T.