What is it about church in the great outdoors that I love so much?  Fresh from my experience of Mass in the woods last night, I’m here to tell you about the Dock Walks that we’ve been running on Sunday afternoons during June.

In the nature of all great experiments, it’s been a case of trial and error.  Each week we’ve tried something a bit different: praying aloud, praying silently, using liturgy, listening to worship music from iPod, listening to worship music played live on the flute, listening to scripture, discussing, listening to portions of a sermon podcast, times of quiet and meditation…

We definitely discovered that there is a slight feeling of awkwardness of gathering in wide open spaces – and so we’ve identified ‘snugs’ – little stop-off points along the way where we can engage in these activities without feeling conspicuous and weird.  And I’ve stopped blasting out worship music from our little speaker when we’re crossing the road!  And week by week we’ve got progressively more comfortable with the idea of chatting and discussing the topic of the week as we’ve walked – especially since we started linking the topic to the WordLive podcasts which we (some of us!) had listened to throughout the week.

And as for the positives – there were loads!  Walking through God’s creation just inspires worship and praise.  There’s no shortage of visual stimulus as we pass the signs of hope and life and creativity of the emerging Titanic Quarter.  Walking along together creates a relaxed atmosphere – it’s easy to chat but it’s also easy to be quiet without feeling awkward – which is hard to re-create indoors.

And, at the end of the day, there’s just something about going for a walk.  A few days ago I arrived home from work tired and grumpy, and it would’ve been easy to just veg out in front of the TV without really chatting to Susan about the day.  But it was a gorgeous evening so I suggested that we went for a walk.  We dandered along the beach at the Lough Shore in Jordanstown, catching up, putting the world to rights, talking about the future – having a real conversation.  And that’s what an invitation to go for a walk together really is – an invitation to a real conversation, sacrificing the couch for the path and the journey.

So The Dock Walk will return!  This Sunday (4th July) we’ll meet at 3:33pm at The Streat (or 3pm onwards for a preliminary coffee) for our usual first-Sunday-of-the-month prayer walk – and maybe we’ll include some Dock Walk-stylee elements as well.  Then we’ll take a pause in July as people jet off to the corners of the globe and go for walks across the world!  And then towards the end of the summer I’ll keep you posted on this blog as we get ready to hit the streets again.

So it just remains to say a massive, heartfelt thank-you to those who were ‘guinea pigs’ and stepped up to be part of the experiment – especially to the 3 faithful friends who braved torrential downpour and extreme cringe on Day 1!