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