Our History

Wellspring Family Church was planted in November 2002 with Jon Beardon at the helm.

The church has grown steadily since then, often through the Alpha Course. For a long period we rented halls for our Sunday meetings at various places including Crane’s Social Club, Dereham Town FC and then Neatherd High School. In March 2008 we moved from renting to our present home - Wellspring Family Centre.

Wellspring was planted through the efforts of Newfrontiers church in Norfolk, and existed as part of the Newfrontiers family of churches. In July 2011, Newfrontiers - then a network of some 800 evangelical, charismatic churches in 50 or so different nations - held what was to be its last leadership conference. At that conference Terry Virgo commissioned those that he recognised as apostles to begin to form their own networks of churches  and 15 or so men were recognised as the next generation of apostles in their own right. All of the churches of Newfrontiers were then encouraged to align themselves with one or other of these apostles. Through warm relationship with Mike Betts, Wellspring joined the Relational Mission sphere of churches, along with many others from Norfolk. Over the years, this has only strengthened and we benefit from the leadership and support offered by Relational Mission and its three apostles: Mike Betts, Maurice Nightingale and Stef Liston 

Over the years we have been committed to the New Testament pattern of planting churches and making disciples in "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the Earth", and accordingly have played a key part in planting in Attleborough and are working hard to establish a church in Watton, along with efforts in Fakenham.




In 2013, Phil Eggleton was appointed as an elder, and in 2018 Pete Collinson was added to the team. In 2019, Pete was asked to take on leadership of the team. In 2021, we appointed a team of deacons to assist the eldership in leading the church. Wellspring is now working to release Jon and the family to church-plant into the West of England, starting with Bath. 

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