Brian McLaren, one of TIME magazine's 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, is back, this time to lead readers on a journey that will prove to be as unsettling and groundshaking as it is thrilling and life-changing. Unafraid of controversy or the uncomfortable gray areas of life, McLaren's quest is to find the essential message of Jesus' life-even if it overturns our conventional ideas, priorities, and practices.

Through the years, I have frequently had an uncomfortable feeling: writes McLaren, that the portrait of Jesus I found in the New Testament didn't fit with the images of Jesus in the church Out of that nagging discomfort arose this book, promising to be McLaren's most revolutionary to date. He writes, I'd like to share my search with you, and invite you to be a part of it. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I'll let you in on this: the farther I go on this search, the more inspired, moved, challenged, shocked, and motivated I become about the secret message of Jesus.

Pastor and best-selling author McLaren revisits the gospel material from a fresh--and at times radical--perspective. . . . He does an excellent job of capturing Jesus' quiet, revolutionary style.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Here McLaren shares his own ferocious journey in pondering the teachings and actions of Jesus. It is McLaren's lack of salesmanship or agenda that creates a refreshing picture of the man who claimed to be God.--Donald Miller, Author of Blue Like Jazz

In this critical book, Brian challenges us to ask what it would mean to truly live the message of Jesus today, and thus to risk turning everything upside down.--Jim Wallis, Author of God's Politicsand editor of Sojourners

Brian has given us an insightful and occasionally startling distillation of the message of Jesus. He is well aware of the many ways it has been distorted and debased by ourselves among others, but McLaren argues compellingly that it continues to be the best message we have--bringing clarity, guidance, and, above all, hope into our shadowed and floundering world.--Frederick Buechner

Brian McLaren insists gently that we recognize the message of Jesus as an ongoing revolution that may never come to an end in time. He reminds us that we have been invited to transform ourselves through Christ. Lucid, compelling, crucial and liberating: a book for those who seek to experience the blessed heat of Christianity at its source.--Anne Rice, Author of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

"Pastor and bestselling author McLaren (A New Kind of Christian) explores Jesus's teaching in this book, placing it in its Jewish context, analyzing its tenets and expression, and trying to work out how it should be lived today. McLaren starts with the assumption that the church may not have accurately understood Jesus's 'secret message' (hidden 'as a treasure one must seek in order to find'). He revisits the gospel material from a fresh — and at times radical — perspective. The church has focused on salvation as a means to 'heaven after you die' for too long, according to McLaren; we should take Jesus at his word when he says 'the kingdom of God is here now,' and work to assist that kingdom by being peacemakers and loving others. McLaren admits to not exploring every topic here in depth, in an effort to keep the book brief, but he does an excellent job of capturing Jesus's quiet, revolutionary style — the prophet who spoke in parables, who didn't want people to talk about his miracles, who challenged established Jewish thought, and paradoxically found ultimate fulfillment and victory through death. Conservative evangelicals will be critical of some points (and there are weaknesses here), but this book will appeal to a broad spectrum of people who want to understand Jesus." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

--Anne Rice, Author of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

McLaren, named as one of "Time" magazines "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America," is back, this time to lead readers on a journey that will prove to be as unsettling and groundshaking as it is thrilling and life-changing.