Stewards of God’s Delight

"Every Christian priest and minister is a gardener, tending God's 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 God's Delight offers the church a vision of God's 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 Clavier's inspirational work delivers the delight that its title promises and invites the reader to live out of God's 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 church's 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 God's 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 God's 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 God's 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