The Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) is Europe’s leading exhibition of its kind, and this year was hosted in Surrey.
Becky (a Refresh Coffeehouse volunteer) and Jerome (part of our logistics team) represented the charity and shared a stall with our long-time partners, Emmaus Bible College.
Jerome has kindly written about his experience of the exhibition to share with you, our supporters.
“I had never been to the CRE before and was nervous on the first day, as it had been many years since I last manned a stand and didn’t know what to expect. We shared the stand with Emmaus Bible College, who provide courses to people in prison. It was a 4x2m stand, so we only had a 2x2m to ourselves, which we filled with donated items from the Renewal showroom; we had offers to buy a rocking chair before the exhibition even began!
At first, Becky and I were very nervous but soon overcame this and enjoyed chatting with visitors. We’d brought a booklet full of real life stories of how the Lord had transformed people’s lives whilst working at Renewal North West. I found that asking people, “Would you like a really good read?”, was a good opener, and got people curious enough to stop and find out more. We gave out 400 copies!
After handing people a copy of the booklet, I would mention that Becky and I were featured in it, which opened up the conversation to let us share our own testimonies. I’d say 98% of people we spoke to were sincerely interested in what we had to say.
We have signed up for CRE 2026, with a bigger stand, so we can reach even more people and share with them the amazing work God is doing through Renewal North West.”
