Stewards of God's Delight: Becoming Priests of the New Creation

The world is our parish and all her creatures our congregation. Based on talks given to ordinands in Wales this book presents the ministry as responding to Gods call to be priestly stewards of creation and to participate in the blossoming of the new creation. Clavier engages with Scripture and people such as Augustine Anselm Bernard of Clairvaux Bonaventure Julian of Norwich Lancelot Andrewes George Herbert C. S. Lewis N. T. Wright and Rowan Williams to portray the whole ministry of Gods people as being animated by the generosity freedom delight and love of God. Our understanding of the ministry must break free from managerial philosophy and business know-how to recapture an approach to ministry that seeks to delight in God neighbors and all of creation in order to reveal the depth of Gods love to a world increasingly immersed in mass consumption. Every Christian priest and minister is a gardener tending Gods creation and renewing it to bring forth blooms that radiate forth the creative love of the Trinity. In expounding this thesis so beautifully Clavier offers an alternative at once orthodox Celtic and ecologically contemporary to dire visions of ministry as managed sympathy or else as world-abandoning mission to isolated individuals. Here a return to the cure of souls is demanded but seen as also the cure of the cosmos. Who could fail to be enthralled by this call? --Catherine Pickstock Professor of Metaphysics and Poetics Emmanuel College University of Cambridge Stewards of Gods Delight offers the church a vision of Gods work that is enchanted by the triune God in conversation with lost portions of the Christian tradition and engaged with the needs of the world. Mark Claviers inspirational work delivers the delight that its title promises and invites the reader to live out of Gods generosity in new and life-giving ways. Read it for inspiration vision and a renewed sense of calling. --Frederick W. Schmidt Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary This book is a Mary to the churchs Martha: in it Mark Clavier allows us to break free of the demoralizing distractions of worldly concerns to share his own experience of priestly ministry inspired and sustained by a rich tradition that encounters God the Creator in a spontaneous delight in his work his presence in others and in ourselves. It is a gloriously subversive and liberating read for all Gods creatures; not just ordinands! --Carol Harrison Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity University of Oxford Here is an account of ministry rooted in theology not pragmatism in Gods gift rather than our plans in abundance and in joy not anxious assumptions of scarcity. With an eye on both the tradition and the work of the church today in Stewards of Gods Delight Mark Clavier proves to be a scribe trained for the kingdom: a steward who can bring out what is old and new from the treasure entrusted to him. --Andrew Davison Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences University of Cambridge; Fellow in Theology Corpus Christi College University of Cambridge Mark Clavier is Acting Principal and Dean of Residential Training at St. Michaels Theological College in Llandaff Wales and Lecturer in Theology at Cardiff University. He served for over fifteen years in churches in Maryland North Carolina and England. He is the author of Rescuing the Church from Consumerism and Eloquent Wisdom: Theology Cosmology and Delight in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo.