Brian Mclaren Biography, Age, Wife, Son, Church and Books

Brian Mclaren Biography

Brian Mclaren is an American pastor, author, activist and speaker and leading figure in the emerging church movement. He is also associated with postmodern Christianity and progressive Christianity and is a major figure in post-evangelical thought.

Brian has often been named one of the most influential Christian leaders in America and in 2005 was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.  He  was also the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland, which he left in 2006 to pursue writing and speaking full-time.

Brian Mclaren Age

Brian was born on May 4, 1956.  He is 63 years old as of year 2019.

Brian Mclaren Education

He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with degrees in English (BA, summa cum laude, 1978, and MA, 1981). Brian’s academic interests include medieval drama, romantic poets, modern philosophical literature, and the novels of Dr. Walker Percy. Mclaren is also a musician and songwriter.

Brian Mclaren Wife

McLaren has a wife and they have four children. Mclaren has traveled extensively in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and his personal interests include ecology, fishing, hiking, kayaking, camping, songwriting, music, art, and literature. McLaren led a gay marriage commitment ceremony for his son Trevor and partner Owen Ryan in September 2012 at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the ceremony was officiated by a Universal Life minister.

Brian Mclaren Son

Trevor Douglas Mclaren who is 28 years old son of Brian Mclaren married his same-sex partner. He married Owen Patrick Ryan in Washington, the marriage ceremony was officiated by Universal Life minister, and his father Mclaren led a commitement ceremony with traditional christian elements afterwards.

Trevor is a senior sales associates in Washington for salesforce.com, a company that sells software used on the Internet. He is a graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu Calif. His mother is Grace A. Mclaren who lives with his father in Marco Island Fla and she is also a real estate agent at Keller Williams there.

Owen Patrick Ryan who was married to Trevor Douglas son to Mclaren is 35 years old, he is the director for public policy in the Washington office of the Foundation for AIDS Research. He is a graduate of Catholic University of America in Washington and received masters’s degree in public health and in international affairs from Columbia. His parent are Eileen and James Ryan of South Amboy, N.J. His mother retired as a nurse for an Old Brige, N.J pediatrician.

Brian Mclaren Church

Cedar Ridge Community Church is a wide, open, and affirming community of Christians, sharing God’s love with everyone and working to make the world a better place for all.

It is was founded by Brian  in 1986, it is a nondenominatinal Church in Baltimore-Washington region. The church currently has grown to involve several hundred people many of whom were previously not involved in any church.

Brian Mclaren Books

Mclaren is an author who has written a number of books, these are some of them:

1. We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation Jun 10, 2014
   by Brian D. McLaren
2. The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian Sep 20, 2016
   by Brian D. Mclaren
3. A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith Jan 21, 2010
   by Brian D. McLaren
4. Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words Mar 15, 2011
   by Brian D. McLaren
5. A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series) Jul 17, 2007
   by Brian D. McLaren
6. Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World Sep 11, 2012
   by Brian D. McLaren
7. A Generous Orthodoxy: By celebrating strengths of many traditions in the church (and beyond), this book will seek to communicate a “generous orthodoxy.” (emergentYS) May 18, 2009
   by Brian D. McLaren
8. The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian Sep 21, 2017
   by Brian D. Mclaren (author)
9. Seeking Aliveness: Daily Reflections on a New Way to Experience and Practice the Christian Faith Nov 14, 2017
   by Brian D. McLaren

Brian Mclaren We Make The Road By Walking

The book offers everything a person needs to explore what a difference an honest, living, growing faith can make in our world today. The book also puts tools in person’s hands to create a life-changing learning community in any home, restaurant or other welcoming space.

Brian Mclaren Quotes

1. “I’m sure I am wrong about many things, although I’m not sure exactly which things I’m wrong about. I’m even sure I’m wrong about what I think I’m right about in at least some cases.”
   “We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn’t claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.”
2. “We’re seeking — imperfectly at every turn, no doubt — an incarnational theology, a theology that brings radical good news of great joy for all the people, good news that God loves the world and didn’t send Jesus to condemn it but to save it, good news that God’s wrath is not merely punitive but restorative, good news that the fire of God’s holiness is not bent on eternal torment but always works to purify and refine, good news that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.”
3. “At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.”
4. “Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach and labourers sweat. But in that silent baby, lying in that humble manger, there pulses more potential power and wisdom and grace and aliveness than all the rest of us can imagine.”
5. “…learning is not the consequence of teaching or writing, but rather of thinking…so a playful, provocative, unclear but stimulating book could actually be more worth your money than a serious, clear book that tells you what to think but doesn’t make you think.”

Brian Mclaren The Great Spiritual Migration

The Christian story, from Genesis until now, is fundamentally about people on the move—outgrowing old, broken religious systems and embracing new, more redemptive ways of life.

Brian Mclaren A New Kind Of Christianity

This book is  Brian D. McLaren’s much anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough work of the emergent-church movement, A New Kind of Christian. Named by Time magazine as one of America’s top 25 evangelicals, McLaren, along with such contemporaries as N.T. Wright, Jim Wallis, and Rob Bell, is one of the acknowledged leaders of a new generation of Christians who want to update their faith for current times while remaining true to the core message of Jesus. In this controversial and thought-provoking book, McLaren explores the questions that will determine the shape of Christianity for the next 500 years.

Everything Must Change Brian Mclaren

Brian for the last twenty years he has been unable to escape this life-shaping question. In this book he unveils a fresh and provocative vision of Jesus and his teachings, and how this message of hope can ignite purpose and passion to change the economic, environmental, military, political, and social crises that have overtaken our world.

Brian Mclaren Why Did Jesus Moses The Buddha

In this book author and speaker Brian Mclaren proposes a new faith alternative one built on benevolence and slidarity rather than rivalry and hostility.

Through blending history, narrative and brilliant insight Mclaren shows readers step-by-step how to reclaim this strong-benevolent faith, challenging us to stop creating barriers in the name of God and learn how affirming other religions can strengthen our commitment to our own. By doing this , he invites Christians to become more Christ-like than ever before.

Career

After several years of teaching English and consulting in higher education, Brian left academia in 1986 to become the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, a nondenominational church in the Baltimore-Washington region. Cedar Ridge Community church has grown to involve several hundred people, many of whom were previously unchurched. In 2004 Brian was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

He has been active in networking and mentoring church planters and pastors since the mid-1980s, and has helped in the development of several new churches. Mclaren has supported his fellow pastors, including former theologian, church planter, and author, Mike Hamel. On his website, he wrote, “I have several friends who have had unbelievably tough years … some of them, tough decades and tough lives overall. I wish I could somehow make things better, but so far all I can do is listen and let their story touch my heart.”

Although Mclaren experienced intense criticism by some Evangelical leaders, he remains a popular speaker for campus groups and retreats as well as a frequent guest lecturer at seminaries and conferences, nationally and internationally. Mclaren’s public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodernism, biblical studies, evangelism, apologetics, leadership, global mission, church growth, church planting, art and music, pastoral survival and burnout, inter-religious dialogue, ecology, and social justice.

He is included on the international steering team and board of directors for Emergent Village; a growing, generative friendship among missional Christian leaders, and serves as a board member for Sojourners and Orientacion Cristiana. Mclaren priviously served as board chair of International Teams, an innovative mission organization with 15 nationally registered members including the United States office based in Chicago, and has served on several other boards, including The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, and Off The Map.

McLaren has a wife and they have four children. Mclaren has traveled extensively in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and his personal interests include ecology, fishing, hiking, kayaking, camping, songwriting, music, art, and literature. McLaren led a gay marriage commitment ceremony for his son Trevor and partner Owen Ryan in September 2012 at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the ceremony was officiated by a Universal Life minister.