Forty-five minutes into a message about John 11 and trusting in Jesus, Sarah Jakes Roberts kicked off her white platform sandals.
She paced and jumped barefoot on the stage at the center of Globe Life Field, where tens of thousands of women stood up as the music swelled.
“I can’t tell you about Buddha. I can’t tell you about Allah. But baby, I can tell you something about Jesus! He’s the sweetest thing I know,” Roberts shouted. “I know he causes all things to work together because there are some things in my life that should have never worked, but he worked ’em.”
Her long metallic earrings and flowing white top swayed back and forth as she preached to the crowd. “I need you to believe not that Jesus cares about you,” she told them, echoing back to the story of Mary and Martha, “but that he cares for you.”
This is Woman Evolve 2024, a three-day stadium event featuring keynotes from teachers like Roberts and Priscilla Shirer, worship sessions, and a range of panels designed to inspire Christian women.
Roberts in some ways has carried on the mantle of her famous father, T. D. Jakes, as a dynamic speaker and pastor. She co-pastors A Potter’s House’s One Church in Los Angeles alongside her husband, Touré Roberts, and the pair are assistant pastors at The Potter’s House in Dallas.
Woman Evolve is Roberts’s evolution of Woman Thou Art Loosed, which Jakes began as a Sunday school class in 1992 and developed into a best-selling book, a feature film, and a conference running from 1996 to 2022.
Its message of hope and healing is one that Roberts, 36, has personalized and built a movement on as she draws from her own struggles and experience surrendering to Jesus.
At 13, Roberts became pregnant and found herself living as a teen mom—a reality only exacerbated by her family being in the limelight. She later dropped out of college and left an abusive relationship. In ministry, Roberts began to share her story to help women who had experienced similar hardships, using her own vulnerability and painful past to point women to the faith that helped her get through.
The first Woman Evolve event took place in Denver in 2018 with around 2,000 women. This year’s gathering at the Arlington, Texas, stadium had over 40,000. Woman Evolve also organizes book clubs, runs a media outlet called Woman Evolve TV, and releases a regular podcast.
“One of the things that I asked God was that he would help me to create an environment where the girls who just want to know God and figure it out and walk it out with him feel safe enough to say, ‘I may not be perfect, but I am hungry,’ so he can meet them in the space of their hunger,” Roberts said. “That’s what Woman Evolve is. I don’t need you to come in here and be perfect. You don’t have to know all the songs or all the Scriptures, but if you have a heart to experience who God is, then I have a space for you at Woman Evolve.”
Last year, Sarah Jakes Roberts appeared in the Time100 with a blurb written by filmmaker Tyler Perry, praising her for finding her voice and speaking to “a generation desperately in need of compassion, teaching, and love.” While some Christians still have questions around Jakes’s views surrounding a decades-old controversy over the Trinity, Roberts remains hugely popular among millions of Black women, from faithful believers to lapsed churchgoers.
The women who gathered in Texas are drawn to Roberts and her messaging—they listen to her teachings and, like nearly 3 million others, follow her on Instagram, where she shares Bible verses, outfits, and snapshots from her life.
The registration lines for the Woman Evolve event spilled out into the parking lot. The attendees took selfies as they entered the stadium, in front of chrome signage outside and huge banners inside. Roberts’s latest book, Power Moves, published in April, was showcased and sold at various kiosks.
During a roll call on the first day, the emcee called out major cities and regions across the US. Plenty of locals from the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex screamed for their city, but there were also cheers representing travelers from all over the US, the Caribbean, and even overseas.
The woman sitting next to me flew from Atlanta. “I came here by myself, but I’m just so excited to be here,” she said. “I felt the Lord nudging me to come, despite the fact that I didn’t have anyone to come with me, and I’m glad I did.”
People came expecting to be changed, as the “evolve” in the event’s name promises, and Roberts repeated the theme of surrender, of refreshed faith, and of giving more of life over to God.
Worship included an anthem for the conference from Maverick City Music singer Naomi Raine, titled “Another Surrender.”
“This weekend is about leaning in to what God knows,” Roberts said. “This is our surrender.”
The sessions were themed around surrendering mindset, heart, and ears and ranged from Scripture teaching and exposition to lessons that incorporated biblical themes into rhythms of daily life.
Shirer—a fellow second-generation Dallas Bible teacher, the daughter of Tony Evans—taught on the importance of remaining in Jesus as a foundation. “The older I get, the more endeared I am to longevity, to faithfulness, to consistency,” she said. “What is the assignment that the Lord has entrusted to you? Build a house on solid ground and remain.”
Nona Jones, the Christian tech executive who currently serves as YouVersion’s global ambassador, drew from 1 Samuel 16 to talk about rejection being a gift: “It just so happened that the king came looking for David in the place he was rejected. That’s why I need every sister in here to know that no matter who left you out in the field, God knows where you are.” (Jones is also a board member for CT.)
There were talks on how to manage money, relationships, body image, and mental health.
Workout coach and social media influencer Johanna Devries, known as growwithjo, led a 10-minute workout that included dancing to gospel music. “We’re taught that movement, that exercise, is to get our body right,” she said. “But that’s not what it’s all about—movement is a catalyst for the joy you need to step into your day.”
During a discussion of addiction, trauma therapist Anita Phillips emphasized the importance of support systems, “community, therapy, medication … all the things.”
Financial educator Tiffany Aliche spoke about budgeting and why financial wisdom is an act of good stewardship. “We remember as Christian women that in our hands, with obedience to God, money can be a tool for good,” she said.
Women shared testimonies of surrender. Actress and comedian Angel Laketa Moore talked about handing over her career dreams and desires to God. “Maturing is understanding that this life isn’t about me offering everything I’m going to do. His take on what my life should be is more important than what my take on what my life should be,” she said. “As a woman of faith and someone who is a dreamer, the hardest thing for me is understanding that he is the real author, the ghostwriter of this book, and I need to see what his words are on the page.”
A young woman from Dallas told me how encouraging it was to hear these messages, to be surrounded by faithful women, after feeling as if she had been running “on fumes.”
She found herself crying on a stranger’s shoulder. She saw someone in tears on the way from the bathroom and formed a prayer circle around her. As she chatted with the women around her during breaks, she realized her testimony was just what someone needed at the moment.
Roberts offered an hour-long message—titled “The Moment of Increase”—that continued to root the event in the theme of surrender. She read from John 11:20–28, when Martha was upset that Jesus didn’t make it to her home before Lazarus died. Roberts reminded the crowd that Jesus’ care for us isn’t always what we expect, but we can still trust in him.
“I wanted to believe that I would never go through it, but now that I’m going through it, I have to believe that you will get me through it. I have to believe that you’ll give me wisdom,” she said, calling out to God.
“You have to believe something about God that you’ve never believed before. You’ll have to believe on a different level. If you’re going to have breakthrough in your life, it’s not going to happen because you stayed seated in your grief,” she said. “Baby, I may be grieving, but I’m still believing.”
Alyssa Gossom is a writer and content editor for RightNow Media and writing contributor for R. H. Boyd Publishing. She is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and has been published in various outlets including The Union Review, Fathom magazine, and Family Christian.
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