Book excerpt: People whose day-to-day lives have not been changed through knowing Christ fill the pews of today's churches, says the urbane, astutely provocative F.J. Sheed – a modern-day Jeremiah in a two-piece suit. Likewise, Sheed asserts, church leaders exhibit similar lacks, and neither clergy nor laymen are blind to, nor silent about, the others' weaknesses. Sheed charges that both share a common failure to consider Christ in their scathing criticisms as they propose both radical change and a return to old ways to correct the problems they see. Says Sheed, "I have fallen into a way of reminding the objectors that . . . an administration is necessary if the Church is to function, but Christ is the whole point of that functioning." Writing from the perspective of a half-century preaching career which began on a corner soapbox in London, this man who expressed concern that "people, more than ever, don't find God interesting" shows in this book, that, more than ever, he does. His main question in this book for all of us to answer is "How real is Christ to us, how well do we know him, what strong desire have we to know him better?" Sheed is perhaps more qualified than almost anyone to write about the Christ who has been forgotten in today's world. Few laymen have had such wide and varied contacts within the Christian world and seen the private face of so many of its public men. Sheed had conversed with, and published most of, the leading Christian writers of the twentieth century.