It’s been a busy first week back in Dock-world.  There have been days of trying to catch up with the email & missed-call mountain from the few weeks away – I still don’t feel as if I’ve crested that summit yet!  There have been days discussing HUGELY exciting new projects and directions for Dock-World which, to my great agony, I can’t tell you about until a few more things have been confirmed… but don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know!

(Well I suppose to be strictly honest, I’ll be the first to know – but you’ll be next!)

And today (and tomorrow) the leetle grey cells are being stretched and challenged by my annual pilgrimage to the Willow Creek global leadership conference.  If you haven’t come across it, Willow Creek is a massive megachurch based in Chicago, which uses a huge amount of its resources to offer top-quality training and leadership development to church leaders throughout the world.  You’ve maybe heard of their senior pastor, Bill Hybels, and his famous axiom that “there is nothing like the local church, when the local church is working well”.  To enable that “working well”, Willow gather an unprecedented roster of authors, leaders, analysts and inspirational speakers together for their yearly summit – and then broadcast the highlights to locations around the world.

Among countless rich pickings from today’s sessions, I loved the idea that our culture can now be best understood as a series of ‘tribes’.  Rather than the old 20th-century distinctions of home, work and church, our social and relational lives are focused around ‘tribes’, groups of people who like what we like.  If you’ve been part of a conversation between two Apple fanatics, or seen the knitting club in action in the Victoria Square Starbucks, or watched the goths hang out at Custom House Square, you’ll get the idea.  In some ways it’s a new phenomenon, enabled by modern communications technology and social networking; in some ways it’s a reflection of a human impulse as old as the hills: the need to connect and belong.

It’s a great insight for The Dock and the Titanic Quarter, with its tribes and connections and emerging community.  It’s what I love about Meet The Neighbours and the Dock Walks.  It gets me really excited and motivated about the years that lie ahead.  Anything and everything we can do to connect people to tribes, to connect tribes to one another, to transform lonely people into thriving community, will be a huge blessing to the TQ.   And that’s why The Dock, as the Titanic Quarter’s first church, exists – to be a blessing and a beacon of life.  There’s nothing like the local church when the local church is working well.