Letters to the Editor 3/16/2005

To the Editor:

A recent Letter to the Editor decried the appearance of hypocrisy of those who devised and benefitted from the funding arrangement between Sisters School District and Sonrise Christian School. Regardless of where the Oregon Department of Education comes down on this arrangement, I believe that the letter writer leveled a charge that should be taken seriously by the Christian community.

There is nothing that Jesus condemned more harshly than the hypocrisy of the religious class in His time.

Although hypocrisy, deceit and unaccountability have become almost “de rigeur” in the secular business and political realms, we expect better from those who profess to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the leadership of some of our most popular and “successful” evangelical churches, as well as independent “ministries,” have all-too-often failed to meet this expectation.

Few within the evangelical Christian community are willing to recognize and deal honestly with the obvious disparity between the promise of the Gospel — i.e., the consistently progressive transformation of the believer into the living image of Jesus Christ — and reality, as evidenced by the lives of many professing, supposedly mature, believers.

Rather than the embodiment of the characteristics of Jesus Christ, what we commonly see is the unchanged person dressed in a “Jesus suit” and, as we have seen, these “Christians” can easily undress when the opportunity is too good to resist.

This is the logical outcome of the current culturally influenced “Church Growth Movement” and the “feel-good” gospel that is central to that movement.

These are “entrepreneurial” organizations that look to the secular marketplace for the means and methods to achieve their success.

This was neither Jesus’ message or His way. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it right when he said, “When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

Bob Wilson

s s s

To the Editor:

Sisters is the only city in Central Oregon that requires developers to pay full costs to the community resulting from new development.

The alternative would be for citizens to subsidize the costs arising from new development. This is done in Redmond and Bend because they did not mandate full SDCs (Systems Development Charges).

But even though these Systems Development Charges seem high, they leave out a major cost, even in Sisters. When the SDCs were put into state law, thedeveloper lobby was able to keep schools off the list of charges.

Each house that is built imposes about $13,000 in average costs on the cumulative population requirements for future school buildings. Previous school bonds passed in Sisters were a public subsidy of development because of the lack of school SDCs.

There is now an opportunity to include schools in the state law if the public encourages representatives to support proposed legislation.

Cities should never have to pass school bonds, for school SDCs should accumulate funds ahead of time to permit schools to be built when they are needed.

Including schools in the state list of SDCs will be a service to students by assuring them of adequate new construction and it will reduce the burden on property taxes by eliminating the need for future school bonds.

William Boyer

s s s

To the Editor:

I would like thank the town of Sisters for welcoming me as a musician in the Starry Nights series.

I deeply appreciate the inspired work of Jerri Fouts and Susan Arends, and I also want to thank the community of Sisters for the overwhelming generosity I was greeted with. It was a treat to relax in the mountains for a few days (y’all really know how to spoil a musician rotten).

There is, however, nothing morerewarding for me than to connect with a joyful audience and to play music in celebration of something larger than my own career.

Thank you to all the folks who make the Starry Nights concerts possible.

Sincerely,

David Jacobs-Strain

To the Editor:

Twenty pairs of eyes and little people gathered around the man they call the grandpa with the white hair and the big voice. They were all ears and eyes as they learned the following (this is what I was told later by these wonderful little students at the SOAR/Head Start program here in Sisters): There are all kinds of spiders: there are wolf spiders, jumping spiders, dragon spiders and a lot more spiders.

Spiders make friends with other spiders and talk to each other in spider talk. They have eight legs and eight eyes. They spit webbing from their body.

They love to be outdoors on a sunny day; they spin their webs from side to side and then go up and down to finish their webs.

They catch flies and drink their blood and they catch other bugs that get too close to their webs. Spiders do back flips and Spiderman taught us to do a back flip (pretty impressive for Jim Anderson).

Then the grandpa started to read us the best book there is, “Charlotte’s Web.” After that the children sang him the thank-you song and waved good-bye.

Kim Leese