'Blindsided': Sarah Jakes on Picking up Mantle from Dad T.D. Jakes and Her Latest Women's Conference

Sarah Jakes Roberts is set to bring her annual women's conference "Woman Evolve" to Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, Sept. 14-16.
 
More than 30,000 women have registered for the two-day event. 

"I am most excited about the collective power of women from all over the world worshipping together, serving one another in vulnerability and progressing together towards God's ultimate vision for their lives," Jakes Roberts said in an interview with CBN News.

Speakers at this year's conference will include Jakes Roberts; The Potter's House Bishop T.D. Jakes; Touré Roberts; Serita Jakes; Brene Brown, scholar and research professor at University of Houston; Devon Franklin, president and CEO of Franklin Entertainment; actress, author, comedian Yvonne Oriji; and a host of others.

Jakes Roberts said it was important to include a variety of speakers across generations.

"I think this in an intergenerational moment of healing and deliverance," she explained. "I think it would be so limiting and restricting if we made it about one generation when we have an opportunity to glean and learn and have wisdom from every generation."

While Jakes Roberts has been hosting Woman Evolve for several years, it's the first one she's held since her father Bishop T.D. Jakes passed the mantle of ministry to women to her during the final Woman Thou Art Loosed Conference in 2022.

She told CBN News what that moment was like for her.

"I felt blindsided because I had no idea that my dad was planning that," said Jakes Roberts. "And I didn't really understand what it would mean until I was standing in the moment for him to say, 'I trust her with your next. I trust her with your life, your destiny. I trust her with your purpose. I trust the grace and anointing on her life.' But I think it is so fitting of how a man can make space for a woman to really step into the fullness of her destiny. I think of Jesus holding the door open for so many women who otherwise would have been discarded or even ignored and yet he says there's a place for you here."

She added, "I think in that moment my father didn't just make a place for me but he made a place for other women who have felt misplaced, rejected and abandoned to finally step into the fullness of their identity. Even if they have to do it nervous and afraid. And so, it was so healing and restorative in ways that I didn't know I needed but I'm grateful that it overflowed into other people's wounds as well."

CBN News also asked Jakes Roberts about the recent debate surrounding female pastors and women in ministry.

"I don't have a response to it to be honest," she said. "I think that the anointing speaks for itself. I think it would be foolish of us to want people to change their minds because we said so. I think that only God can convict and change the heart. And I think that as long as we stay in the conviction of our anointing and the conviction of our ability to heal and to prophesy and to inspire using the word of God that that is enough. I'm not called to change people's minds about who I am. I'm called to lead as many people to Jesus. And I try to stay focused on my lane."

Meanwhile, Jakes Roberts is also set to release her latest book, All Hope Is Found: Rediscovering the Joy of Expectation, Sep. 19.

When asked what she wants readers to glean from the project, she said, "I want people to stop looking for hope to come knocking on the door or showing up in the form of a text message or waiting for hope to come to them and instead shift their posture, their spirit, their perspective in such a way that they begin to discover the hope that is literally laying dormant in their day to day lives. Little pieces of hope that serve as a reminder that there is great hope on the horizon."

It is a hope Jakes Roberts says will be on full display at this year's "Woman Evolve".

"I hope to empower women to go back into their cities, their communities, the places where maybe they felt once restricted with a new sense of liberation, of power, of focus. That they would literally become the hope that their communities, that their families, that their churches have been waiting for. I believe that a woman changes everything connected to her. So really as large as this event is, these women are just seeds. The real harvest is what takes place when they get home," Jakes Robert said.