Stewards of God's Delight

"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 God's 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 God's 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 God's love to a world increasingly immersed in mass consumption.

Mark Clavier is Acting Principal and Dean of Residential Training at St. Michael's 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.