One question I’m often asked is: Is The Dock a church?

To which the answer is: sort of…

For some people, this whole shebang won’t be a church until we’re baptising, marrying, preaching, eucharisting (is that a word? My spell-check doesn’t think so)… For other people, ‘church’ happens every day in conversations and beautiful moments in the cafe.  Every time a stranger is welcomed, every time someone lonely gets drawn into a conversation, every time a group of friends spend the afternoon putting the world to rights, every time someone finds peace in the middle of a busy day… church happens just a little bit.

Today was a great example.  Take a look around the cafe: over by the window, a group of students are playing a game of chess between classes; another group are catching up on their revision; another gang just collapse on the sofas.  A local businessman puts on the noise-cancelling headphones and spends half-an-hour looking out at the wintry sun on the water.  A group who have been walking around Belfast huddle by the gas fire, gradually nursing feeling back into numb fingers.  A couple browse the art on the walls, lingering over every piece that moves them.  On the cafe stereo Michael Buble croons ‘Silent Night’  and the whole cafe stills, the burble of conversation dipping as we all feel a little touch of “the dawn of redeeming grace”.

And as well as the unexpected moments, the Dock still has its routine of worship – it just doesn’t look like church.  The Dock Walks still happen every week at 3:33 on a Sunday afternoon – and yes, in answer to another FAQ, they continue every week through the winter, rain hail or shine!

In a way the winter Dock Walks are my favourites.  Crisp cold air, the sun setting behind the hills of Belfast as we walk, standing sharing in Bible discussion with our breath misting in the air.  Watching the way the unique, piercing winter sun lights up the cranes and bounces off the mirrored panels of Titanic Belfast.

Last week we walked past just after Father Christmas had arrived for TB’s Victorian Christmas spectacular; we got to meet actual proper reindeer waiting patiently at the door, and stood listening to the unquestionable, unimprovable sound of Christmas (a Sally Army brass band playing carols).  Then a brisk walk to the end of the slipways, talking with the sinking sun streaking the sky, and listening to worship songs at the feet of Goliath as the moon emerged from behind the clouds.

I know The Dock is still a work in progress, and whether or not it’s yet ‘a church’ is still an open question.  It’s a community living room, an Honesty Box cafe, a Sunday walk, a group of people with a vision for a new part of Belfast.  Standing under Goliath with friends on a Sunday afternoon, ready to walk back to the cafe for steaming mugs of hot chocolate, it’s enough for me.

Life.  Laughter.  Friends.  Warmth.  Music.  Banter.  Coffee.  Reasons to be thankful – and ten thousand besides…

The Dock has had a very thankful week.  Our Thanksgiving Day celebrations yesterday saw the whole Dock community – residents, students, tourists, builders, businesspeople, volunteers – join together to create a massive paper chain of Reasons to be Thankful.

Munching special thanksiving sandwiches and disgraceful amounts of Roses, Celebrations and Quality Street, we spent a hugely moving and powerful day remembering just how much we have to be thankful for – capping it all off with some fantastic acoustic tunes from the gang at the Belfast Met Christian Union to round off the evening.

And of course we’re still buzzing from the joy of celebrating The Dock’s third birthday – a birthday party held for the first time in ‘our place’.

On Day One, The Dock met in the open air and went for a walk:

For Birthday Party One, we hired a room in the Pump House Cafe:

For our second birthday, we used the empty concrete unit in which we’d been Meeting The Neighbours:

And for our third birthday… we gathered in Dock Cafe, fired up the heaters, ordered extra scones, filled the coffee machine, crashed on the sofas, gathered round the furnace… and partied our little socks off.  We showed some pictures of the progress of both the Titanic Quarter and The Dock over three incredible, eventful, unforgettable years.   I spoke (without a script – which I think meant that I just babbled I’m so thankful it’s so amazing thankyou thankyou thankyou… for about an hour).  We got out the guitars and keyboards (the Dock volunteers formed a band – provisionally called Dock Collective Experiment – for the evening), lifted our voices and thanked God with all our hearts and souls.

And then Tegan cut the cake which mum had baked – which, as always, perfectly captured the story of the Dock at each birthday.  For Year One – in which we brainstormed, caught the vision, and formed the Dock as a shared project, the cake was the new Dock logo:

For Year Two – in which we started Meet the Neighbours, began the Dock Walks, and went boat-hunting – the cake looked like this:

And for Year Three – in which The Dock found a home, opened a cafe, found itself at the centre of Life in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast’s Titanic year – three words summed it up:

We Are Open.  Thankyou.

Thanks to movies, Friends, and the general cultural invasion of America on an unsuspecting world, Thanksgiving Day is becoming a global festival.  To which The Dock says – hurrah!  It can’t be a bad idea to set aside a day to be thankful for the plentiful blessings which can be found even in our darkest circumstances.

So we’re celebrating Thanksgiving 2012 in style – hope you can join us:

If this all sounds a little familiar, you’ll remember that we had another ‘Thankful Day’ last week, when we used The Dock’s third birthday as a chance to give thanks for the huge blessings of this past year.  It started simply – a last-minute idea to give away sweets to every customer along with a slip of paper, on which they were invited to write a ‘Reason To Be Thankful’.

It ended up being one of the most powerful, profound, moving things we’ve ever done in Dock Cafe.  As the slips of paper started filling the little cardboard box, it became clear that people were taking this seriously – and that everyone had something to be thankful for.  Friends, family, health, warmth, welcome, Dock Cafe, strength for difficult times, success in exams, husbands, wives, children, parents, grandparents, lunch, forgiveness, creativity, Tom Hardy (?!)…

As the slips kept piling in we started making them into a chain – which will hopefully be extended as we think of more and more reasons throughout ‘Thanksgiving Day’ tomorrow.

Why not join us on one of our Thankful Thursdays and add a link to the chain – we don’t stop to give thanks often enough!

We showed this video at the Dock’s third birthday party – rapid-fire pictures of Dock Cafe life throughout the year – from the empty concrete shell we moved into in Feb 2012, to the gorgeous, warm home-from-home we know and love today.

It’s been an incredibly fast and dramatic year – so I thought a blink-and-you’ll-miss-something video with a storming, epic soundtrack was appropriate – that’s the way it felt as it was unfolding!

So crank up your speakers and click Play – and don’t blink…

Well that was a night to remember…!

Massive thanks to all who made The Dock’s third birthday such a phenomenal night.  More details to follow soon – but for now, you can feast on a gorgeous series of photos taken by Jeremy at thebigwoodenbox – find the full Flickr set here or click on some of the pics below: