A great night of brainstorming last night, as the entire team of Walking Tour guides and staff from the Pump House Cafe got together over pizza and beer to talk about the hopes, worries and plans for the next year.

It’s hard to believe that April 2012 and the big Titanic anniversary are just around the corner.  As we chatted, brainstormed and dreamed, it struck me again just what a huge year this will be for Belfast and for the Titanic Quarter.  EVERYTHING will change next year.  This little corner of the world will be the focus for remembering the ship which is now (they say) the second-best-known name in the world (after Coca-Cola).

For those working in the TQ, April ’12 hangs in the air like a promise and a threat.  It’s hard to know whether to worry that no-one will bother to make the trip to Belfast for the anniversary, or that so many people will make the trip that we aren’t able to cope with them!  It’s hard to imagine how the existing balance of the TQ will adapt to the opening of Titanic Belfast and the SS Nomadic as well as the Dock and Pump House. It could all be triumph or disaster.  Only one thing is for sure – a fabulous, committed, passionate, creative team are working their hearts out to make sure that it’s superb.

So I’ve said this on The Dock blog before  – GO ON A TITANIC WALKING TOUR NOW!  You honestly won’t regret it – it’s the perfect time.  The tours are still running twice daily (11am and 2pm at the Premier Inn) until the end of October, when they switch to Winter Mode and happen less often.  The Titanic Quarter is gloriously, tantalisingly poised between the past and the future – and there’s something wonderful about being there at this stage, when it’s all still a work in progress.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m unbelievably excited about next year; I can’t wait for my first visit to Titanic Belfast, to see the refurbished Nomadic emerge from underneath the tarpaulins, to have to fight my way through crowds of tourists with LOUD shirts and huge cameras.  But there’s something authentic about seeing the docks in their current state; an atmosphere of history that you can’t put your finger on and that money can’t buy.  It’s all going to change before we’ve had a chance to catch our breath.  So what are you waiting for?

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.

After a rather delicious break touring the world in the VW Campervan for a few weeks, Susan & I are back home and back to the exciting world of the Titanic Quarter and all things Dock…

And what a great homecoming!  The first day ‘back to work’ was Saturday – when Karen and the team had done a great job organising another Meet The Neighbours get-together – one of the busiest yet, with some fantastic chats with lovely, lovely people who braved the rainy morning to be part of the TQ community.  And as a special bribe (as you can see in the pic) there was some extremely fine luxury hot chocolate on offer…

Then on the Dock Walk on Sunday, we were joined by visitors from Polish Mission Church, a Polish-speaking church community based in Lisburn, who were celebrating their 5-year birthday.  The Dock is now coming up on its 2-year birthday – where will be be in 5 years…?

And just to prove that I didn’t forget y’all on holiday – there were visits to boats to remind us of the Dock, and steam boilers to remind us of Titanic (in a miniature form…)

And into the bargain, my holiday reading was the new book about Bruce Ismay, which I devoured from cover to cover… obsessed much?!

Picture if you will the sight of a 36-year-old man reduced to the state of a child on Christmas morning by the excitement of walking into a half-finished building and seeing a load of scaffolding and plasterboard walls.  For that, dear reader, is what has become of your esteemed correspondent.  As if getting to see inside the new Metropolitan College last week wasn’t enough, this week the Dock Chaplains were part of a hard-hat tour group given an in-depth walk through the new Titanic Belfast visitor centre.

Just to set the excitement of this event in context, and hopefully make me look not-quite-so-weird, the emergence of Titanic Belfast from hole in the ground, to skeleton, to cladding-padded outline, to stunning visitor centre has been one of the big stories constantly turning its pages behind the scenes, just out of shot, throughout my time in the TQ.  How’s this for a before and after – 2010:

And 2011:

And so to finally get inside and under the skin of this fabulous project – yes I was excited!  So is it time for another Dock movie, I hear you ask?  Complete with overblown musical soundtrack to convey the drama of the situation?  Well…

So!  What a perfect, perfect way to draw a line under this little chapter of Dock life before Sus and I head off on holiday tomorrow.  Yet another door open.  As we sat down for a coffee in the Premier Inn afterwards, we were reflecting just how many doors have been opened to the Dock in this past year. The Met and Titanic Belfast are just the start.  The Premier Inn has opened its doors and welcomed us week by week.  The Walking Tours have led to all sorts of open doors – I have to admit I love having a pocketful of keys for the Drawing Offices, the slipways and the Pump House when I’m on tour duty.  And TQ Ltd have been incredible, opening the doors so that we can run deckchair cafes and Meet The Neighbours.

Which leads to one more reason for my light heart as we leave on holiday.  This time last year, everything in Dock-World ground to a halt for the couple of weeks that I was away.  This year, you’ll hardly notice I’m gone!  Meet The Neighbours events are still happening as usual (the next one’s on Saturday at 11am), the Dock Walks continue every Sunday at 3:33 in the Streat, emails to the Dock will get a response, there’ll be all sorts of news on the blog (no pressure Co!), even the Dock Management Team is meeting in my absence, confident that there’s plenty to be done!  It’s a new world, and a good world.  Profoundly, wonderfully, I am not All By Myself in this adventure any more.  Doors are opening and friendships are sparking into life.  God is working.  The Dock is on the move!

A little pang of sadness today as I led my Titanic Walking Tour group around the sights of the TQ…  y’see Susan and I are about to take off in Harvey the Campervan for a couple of weeks for our summer break, which means no more Titanic Walking Tours for the next wee while.  And, saddo that I am, I’m going to miss them!

Time then to deluge you with some more photos – not of gleaming new bits of the Titanic Quarter this time, but the lovely old crumbly bits we get to explore on the Titanic Walking Tours.  If any of you reading this blog haven’t been down to the TQ for a walking tour yet, shame on you!! – and hopefully these pics will whet your appetite…

First up, a few pictures of some of the highlights of the tour – the Drawing Rooms and the Thompson Dry Dock:

There have been rainy days… big tour groups… small groups… locals and a huge variety of visitors… and days when the storm clouds threatened in the distance – but never actually broke!

This lovely old rusty Caisson gate at the back of the Thompson Dock is a pretty amazing piece of history: built at the same time as Titanic and Olympic, from the same hand-rivetted sheet metal, it’s been holding back the sea for the last hundred years, and only just recently started to let some water in as it approached its 100th birthday.  Not bad going…

(There are some really exciting plans to take the pressure off the gate by building a new one beyond it – which would allow visitors right down to the bottom of the dock for the first time in many years.  Can’t wait!)

Some of the personal history that emerges during tours is amazing.  The gents on the left were Australian visitors on a Walking Tour last weekend; they couldn’t believe their eyes when the tour entered the Pump House at the Dry Dock and they saw the 3 massive Victorian pumps down in the pump well.  If you look closely at the pic on the right, you’ll see that the pumps are stamped by the manufacturer, Gwynnes – it turned out that these guys were Gwynnes themselves, and knew that their great-grandfather had been a manufacturer of marine pumps before the family had emigrated to Australia.  They were able to confirm that the pumps were absolutely the original 1911 fittings, as the company had ceased trading soon afterwards – and were beyond delighted that some Gwynnes pumps still exist somewhere in the world!

A few more beauty shots around the Pump House…

So as you can maybe tell, I’ve been loving every moment of these Walking Tours.  I’m Chris Bennett, and I’m a Titanorak.  The rich, powerful story of this old ship has completely sucked me in; the excitement and passion I felt for the new TQ development at the start of my role as Chaplain to the Titanic Quarter is now completely matched by my love for the history and heritage of the area.  I think I sense God’s hand in both of them.  There’s something very profound about a city rediscovering its past, acknowledging the shoulders we stand on.  And to be able to do so while being surrounded by bright hope for tomorrow…wow.