Searching For A Better Way

I think this article by a Wiccan responding to the gospels is fascinating. It also reveals quite a bit about how we are or are not perceived as churches. It's a background that I kind of share, so I have a lot of sympathy. My question is how we can honour this kind of searching without being imperialistic and triumphalistic. How can we affirm what is really of lasting value in this search and gently challenge the stuff that gets in the way of the gospel -and what is the gospel for this person anyway? Sometimes our 'gospel' turns out to be nothing of the kind, merely a set of propositions that make sense to us and which we suppose, therefore, ought to be accepted by others. Really the gospel is surely about an encounter with Jesus Christ wich leads in a positively transformative direction? Surely transformation is not about denying the things that are consonant with that transformation but a reconfiguring of them?
I think that it is so telling that the writer can put this: "I don't see any Christ in many of the present day "Christian" churches. Instead they remind me of college fraternities where a select, chosen few are welcome and the rest are turned away at the door. I think of the megachurches (here in Dallas there is a church that is commonly referred to as either Fort God or, if they have a festival going, Six Flags Over Jesus) and am forcibly reminded of Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of his Father's house."

I just wonder whether this sense of the counter-message of church structures and legalistic Christianity is part of what is going on in this story of an Epsicopal Priest reaching out to Druids [see also the sequel] ... it's hard to tell but I suspect that he was/is trying to affrim a real spiritual search which is rightly picking up important things that just do not seem to be representable in the church as it is currently configured and it makes it really hard to know how best to deal with it. Of course the guy could just be losing it, but I suspect -charitable interpretation as per 1Cor.13- that he's wrestling with some really difficult cross-cultural issues against a lot of misunderstanding and suspicion. At least that is a possible interpretation. I have to confess, that I could see myself trying to make this kind of outreach, particularly after reading Steven Lawhead's 'Patrick'

Searching For A Better Way: I've Been Reading The Bible