{"id":31629,"date":"2023-12-11T00:16:34","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T23:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=31629"},"modified":"2023-12-11T00:16:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T23:16:34","slug":"mayors-christmas-advent-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=31629","title":{"rendered":"Mayor&#8217;s Christmas Advent Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag23\/2023121004.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nBreaking with tradition, Mayor Gwyneth Lewis opted for Trinity Church, the church of her chaplain, Deacon Selina Nisbett, for this year&#8217;s civic service. While the service was less formal than a full civic service, lacking the use of the Mace, it was still well attended by the town councillors. The councillors processed into the church at the beginning of the service.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag23\/2023121003.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nThe service began when the Mayor&#8217;s cadet read an advent reading, and the Mayor lit the second of the five candles on the advent crown.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag23\/2023121002.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nThe Fijian Fellowship Choir from Dalton Barracks sang two worship songs during the service.<\/p>\n<p>Deacon Selina Nisbett, the Mayor&#8217;s chaplain, spoke on building a &#8216;highway of hope,&#8217; drawing on the reading from Isaiah 40 by the Mayor about <em>&#8216;Make straight the way for the Lord<\/em>&#8216; . Selina encouraged the congregation to focus on their own &#8216;stretches&#8217; of the path to peace. The service concluded with the National Anthem, &#8216;God Save the King.&#8217;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag23\/2023121001.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nAfterwards people went through to the Conduit Centre for coffee and mince pies. This picture shows the Mayor, Deacon Selina, and one of the members of the Fijian Choir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Breaking with tradition, Mayor Gwyneth Lewis opted for Trinity Church, the church of her chaplain, Deacon Selina Nisbett, for this year&#8217;s civic service. While the service was less formal than a full civic service, lacking the use of the Mace, it was still well attended by the town councillors. The councillors processed into the church [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-council","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}