Brian McLaren is a controversial speaker, author and prominent voice in the Emerging Church Movement. He is also the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland, USA and was born in 1956. He was named as one of TIME magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America." Many of the books that he has written, including the "A New Kind of Christian" trilogy, deal with Christianity in the context of the cultural shift towards postmodernism. McLaren is on the board of emergent and in spite of the intense criticism levelled at him by 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. His public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodernism. He is married with four children and is also a musician and songwriter.