It was back in September 2011 that Fresh Streams was launched and in January 2012 we held our first National Leadership Conference at The Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick. For a fuller picture of how we evolved from Mainstream then click here.
In May 2015 Andy Glover took on the role of Team Leader and the church he leads in Chester, HBC Chester, became the administrative hub church for the network. Andy offers time and leadership to the network and HBC Chester provide the infrastructure for the network to organise and administrate the conferences and events that take place each year. In recognition of this Fresh Streams gives £15,000 a year to HBC Chester. For the past 3 years 2016, 2017 and 2018 the number of delegates has steadily increased to the point where the 2018 National Leadership Conference is the largest in Fresh Stream’s recent history!!
In 2014 we held our first Theology Summer School, this was a a success and was repeated again in 2016. We are going to hold another summer school in 2018, on June 14th and 15th. This will be at a new venue St Peters Baptist Church Worcester and will be led by Mark Elder.
We have had a strong commitment to hosting Prayer and Fasting Days since 2012 and each May we have a National Day held at Rising Brook Baptist Church. This day begins a National Gathering of leaders over 36hrs where we pray and seek God together, we usually have some input from a guest speaker from one of our partner organisations, in 2018 this will be Paul Harcourt National Director for New Wine England. In the autumn of each year we also hold regional Prayer and Fasting Days and in 2018 this will be in 7 different locations around England – Teeside, Chester, Nottingham, Swindon, Brighton and Hove, Worcester and Kent.
For 2018 we have the following 5 priorities:
Pioneering and Mission
Women in Leadership
Millennials
Children, Youth and Family Ministry
Word and Spirit flowing together
We shall be giving time over the next few months exploring how we do this and what partnerships we need to strengthen/develop so that we do this as well as we can.