The Church Jesus Prayed For: A Personal Journey into John 17 by Michael Cassidy and published by Monarch.
This is the fruit of meditation over 35 years on John 17. For most of his ministry Michael Cassidy has been wracked by the discrepancy between the church Jesus portrays, and the church in daily experience. Luther wrote of John17: "It is so deep, so rich, so wide, no one can fathom it." John Knox had the chapter read to him every day of his last illness. William Temple once reflected that "it is perhaps the most sacred passage even in the four Gospels." John Stott called it "one of the profoundest chapters of the Bible".
Michael Cassidy looks at Jesus's vision and the church's mundane reality with care and prayerful reflection, asking: Where have we gone wrong? What can we do? How should we amend our ways? He studs his text with dozens of luminous and engaging anecdotes. This is an enormously readable and attractive book, permeated with Michael's generous, engaging spirit and shot through with insights into the human condition.
