Chaplain Chris Bennett gives the latest news on The Dock, Belfast.
We have seen amazing growth in many ways but there's no doubt that The Tall Ships festival in Belfast in July certainly put us to the test. It was, in every way, a big event. Fifty ships, 50,000 visitors and, over four days, the Dock Café served 5,510 customers!
We've also just celebrated another milestone in that we have filled a complete Visitors' Book in Dock Café. It may not sound like much but, when we opened in 2012, we commissioned some lovely leather-bound visitors' – books though it seemed impossible that we would ever run out of space. Hundreds of pages, eight entries per page… there would never be that many customers through our doors, would there?
The first entries are back in the days when the amount of customers in an entire day might be less than we now have waiting outside when we open the door in the morning! But looking through the completed book now – it does the heart good to see the multinational, multicultural, multiplicity of people who have signed their name and home and comment on every page of the book.
Page after page after page tells a story of visitors finding a welcome, wanderers finding a home, individuals finding friendship, busy people finding peace, stressed people finding space, sorrowful people finding a smile, sceptical people finding faith (or sometimes just some experience of God, or grace, or something divine that they can't quite put their finger on…)
The Dock charity is made up of a number of things: café, art gallery, museum and, of course, church – a church which continues to involve a team of dedicated volunteers and chaplains from across all church backgrounds, both Protestant and Catholic, who are committed to sharing every step of the journey of building community in this new part of Belfast.
We also have a prayer garden where people can rest and reflect, or talk to one of our Prayer Team. It's a little oasis of greenery and peace in the corner of The Dock Café and is open during Café hours; providing a space to reflect, read from our library of books, and maybe write a prayer and post it on the wall or in the prayer journal.
Our Sunday Nights at The Dock church gatherings are an opportunity to meet The Dock team, neighbours, supporters and newcomers; to worship, share new insights, celebrate good news and to pray for Belfast and each another. Taking place in The Dock Café on the first Sunday of every month from 6pm, there's plenty of time to chat, enjoy a drink of tea or coffee and receive prayer. These services do not 'belong' to any one denomination and we welcome everyone, of every tradition and background – which was the Dock vision from the very start.
Reflecting on what has happened in The Dock so far makes me realise what a tremendous journey we've been on… including Dock Walks, Titanic commemorations, opening Titanic Belfast, the formation of café itself in the early days with just a handful of volunteers and customers, and then the explosive growth of our beloved cafe/church/community home-away-from-home.
It is breath-taking to realise how much life and joy and transformation have been packed into a few short years in this wonderful place.
The Dock is an ethos, a momentum, a vision to build life in the Titanic Quarter. Under that umbrella, countless expressions of that life can grow, flourish, multiply, propagate. Some (most?) will be temporary, in the right place at the right time. But through it all, we’ll try to stay light on our feet; we’re not here to build a cathedral, an edifice or institution. We’re here to live.
They also gave us a deadline of six days because a BBC crew were arriving in the area to film Titanic Songs of Praise. Was there any chance we could be open and ready in time for them to film in Dock Café?!
It has made such a difference at the Titanic Quarter to work alongside my Methodist co–chaplain, Karen Spence. We're hoping to see further working partnerships develop in future.
In saying that, no-one is put on the spot, made to speak or pray out loud – and we don't sing, or preach, or walk around with sandwich boards. I find it really encouraging that people without any church links feel able to pitch in with their thoughts and discussions and I like to think that it's because we make everyone feel welcome and part of what's happening. I think there is something very fundamental and natural about going for a walk that releases people to be a lot more personal and to share their opinions with each other. It's also not weird or awkward to have a time of quiet when you are walking.
By then we'll have walked through the Quarter and areas around it; that's when we stop to listen to some worship music. At that stage we make the return trip and head to the Café for a coffee and more time together. All is constantly subject to change due to weather, people and what is happening in the Titanic Quarter. The whole thing takes about an hour and a half.
Belfast's Titanic Quarter is at the heart of the city's regeneration. A few years ago the area was largely deserted, but a large-scale redevelopment programme is transforming it into a 21st century 'urban village'. Chris Bennett is chaplain of The Dock.
It requires a kind of reordering of your expectations in a new way. It's a process. I was coming in with some expectations which were pretty standard parish-based ideas and it's been fun having that knocked out of me.
The idea of yet another expression of church in a place where division and sectarianism has caused such problems in the past can be seen as not overly helpful. There are very few working models of how Christians all share a ministry other than chaplaincy – why should it not work in the Titanic Quarter? The variety of needs here is too great to ever be encompassed by one minister or even one denomination. Chaplaincy is helping us to work out shared working in denominations. It's a key that unlocks unity rather than describing my absolute mission statement.
Clearly the Titanic Quarter, when complete, will be big enough to merit its own local church. But the opportunity runs even deeper than the chance to plant another church along existing models. A brand-new community, in a brand-new part of the city, offers an opportunity to re-envision church for a new cultural context.
I would see our expression of church as our weekly Dock Walk where we chat about a passage of Scripture as we're on the move, or as we stop, pray, or listen to meditations or music. We use 
As part of our future plans, I also hope to get a boat – that has been the concept right from the start. Quite a few people ask us why, particularly with all of the Titanic associations here, but it feels like we are at the stage where we have done all we can do in coffee shops and a boat would give us an operational base. That means people could physically find us rather than having to rely on a website and a phone number for information.
As for being associated with the name of the Titanic, we're all accustomed to queries as to whether it's bad taste to commemorate that link at all. In fact the view in Northern Ireland is that it was all right when it left here; it was later on when disaster struck. But for many years there was a real level of shame about it – I actually think there is something of God about the way that everything is tying together in Northern Ireland at the moment. Somehow, the Titanic, from being a thing we never much talked about, is being re-born because it pre-dates the Troubles. For all that it was quite clearly a tragedy on its maiden voyage, the very fact that it sank has stamped its name on history. Many other ships suffered tragedies but the scale of the Titanic's amazing construction makes it unique and people now feel it's right to remember the incredible expertise that went into it. That's why there was such interest surrounding the recent 100-year anniversary of the Titanic setting sail.
The talk in the corridors of political power is all about Shared Future and Community Cohesion – redefining the existing communities and asking them to change but here we have the opportunity to create a new community that looks very different from our sectarian past.