The new team rector of Abingdon, the Rev. Dr Charles Miller, was Inducted at a service at 7:40. It should have been 7:30 but the AbITs program was doing some major works today (the Ock Street / Stratton Way junction was down to one lane), and the queues were so bad around town that the service was delayed.

At one stage in the service called “The Induction” a chap introduced by the Bishop as the Arch Deacon gave the temporal keys of the church to the new Rector and said “I induct you into the real, actual and corporeal possession of the parish churches or St Helen, St Nicholas… Christ Church with Long Furlong and St Michael and All Angels, with all the rights and responsibilities belonging to them.”

The new Rector might be worried about the state of the St Helen church building he has inherited with all that scaffolding round it. But it is only for the new bells and clock.

Anyway, a lot of the service was ceremonial, and the service booklet was a huge 20 pages long. But the Bishop did explain at one stage to the uninitiated that the bishop’s hat he wore and all the ceremony did not really matter. What matters is faith lived out in love by all believers.

Revd Dr Charles Miller is an American, and the second American to hold the office.