Sarah Jakes Roberts is hitting the road — and the timing could not be more significant.
On Monday, October 19, the co-senior pastor of The Potter’s House takes the stage at Detroit’s Masonic Temple to launch “The Rogue Route,” a seven-city Woman Evolve tour running through October 28. It is her first major tour since a near-catastrophic trampoline accident in April nearly ended her life — and her most visible move yet in the new era of the Dallas megachurch, following her father T.D. Jakes’ historic handover of leadership last year.
Six months ago, she was in a neck brace. This week, she takes seven stages.
The Comeback: From Neck Brace to Seven Stages
The story behind “The Rogue Route” begins on April 18, 2026, with an accident that could have changed everything.
Jakes Roberts revealed the next day, April 19, on Instagram and Facebook that she had fractured her neck and herniated discs in a trampoline accident — an injury she described with unflinching honesty. “I was almost paralyzed, but God didn’t see fit to let that be my story,” she told her followers. “One disc up or one disc lower, and this would’ve been a different testimony.”
The details were sobering: “several pops” in her neck, treatment across two hospitals, and a neck brace she would wear for four to six weeks. The injury forced her to postpone the 2026 Woman Evolve conference — a painful but necessary pause for a woman whose ministry has always been built on showing up.
Now, half a year later, the pause is over. The seven-city run is the embodiment of the tour’s central question, posed by Woman Evolve itself: “What happens when heaven interrupts earth’s programming?” As tour coverage has framed it, the “Rogue” concept reflects a year in which unexpected changes altered Woman Evolve’s plans without changing its broader mission — the detour itself becoming part of the message.
Announcing the tour, Jakes Roberts spoke of the season that produced it. “This has been one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had to go back to the drawing board and ask God what does it look like for me to respond now,” she said. “I had to go rogue in ways I didn’t anticipate. The usual way of showing up, just wasn’t working.”
The Tour: Seven Cities, Seven Nights
The Rogue Route opens Monday, October 19, at 7 PM at Detroit’s Masonic Temple, with special guests Mia Ray, Kierra Sheard, Tasha Cobbs Leonard, and Kayla Wanakee — a powerhouse gospel lineup for opening night.
From there, the tour moves fast:
- October 19 — Detroit, MI — Masonic Temple (7 PM)
- October 20 — Chicago, IL — Auditorium Theatre (with Luvvie Ajayi Jones)
- October 22 — St. Louis, MO — Stifel Theatre (with Dr. Anita Phillips and guests)
- October 24 — Memphis, TN — Orpheum Theatre
- October 25 — Birmingham, AL — BJCC Concert Hall
- October 26 — Nashville, TN — Ryman Auditorium (with Lisa Knowles-Smith and Dr. Anita Phillips)
- October 28 — San Antonio, TX — Majestic Theatre
The routing is deliberate: theaters, not arenas — rooms built for conversation, not spectacle. That fits Woman Evolve’s DNA. The movement grew out of Jakes Roberts’ personal blog, where she vulnerably processed her own pain — teen pregnancy stigma, low self-esteem, toxic relationships, depression — and it has since become one of the country’s largest gatherings for Black women of faith, with attendees traveling from across the nation for its annual conference.
The Rogue Route takes that experience beyond a single conference destination, bringing its mix of candid conversation, connection, and faith-focused programming into theaters around the country. And for those watching the calendar: Woman Evolve is expected to return to Atlanta in 2027 for its flagship conference — making this fall’s run a bridge, not a replacement.
The Succession Context: Leading After T.D. Jakes
To understand why this tour matters beyond its seven dates, you have to understand what changed at The Potter’s House.
On April 27, 2025, during a Sunday service, Bishop T.D. Jakes — with his wife Serita beside him — announced he was stepping back from leading the church he founded nearly three decades earlier. The new senior pastors: his daughter, Sarah Jakes Roberts, and her husband, Touré Roberts. Their roles became official in July 2025. Jakes continues to serve on the church’s Board of Directors.
The announcement followed a health scare that had shaken the congregation: in November 2024, Jakes suffered a massive heart attack while preaching — an incident captured on video as he shuddered and became incoherent on stage. He later revealed on NBC’s Today show in March 2025 that the right side of his heart had been completely blocked, and that doctors told him arriving five minutes later would have been fatal.
“I cannot afford, especially after November, to risk something happening to me, and you be sheep without a shepherd,” Jakes told the congregation that April Sunday.
The church was clear that the transition had been in preparation for years. A family letter to the congregation described “long-held plans of purposeful evolution,” noting milestones along the way: the family’s move from Los Angeles to Dallas, the transition from the iconic “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference to “Woman Evolve” in 2022, and the installation of two new assistant pastors in 2023. Jakes stressed that his daughter and son-in-law were chosen for their experience in church leadership, not simply because they are family.
That Sunday, a tearful Sarah Jakes Roberts embraced her father and addressed the congregation: “As your pastor-elect, co-senior pastor elect, I’m grateful, I’m honored as your daughter.”
It was a generational handoff at one of the most influential megachurches in America — a church that has reported tens of thousands of members — and it placed Sarah Jakes Roberts at the center of one of the most-watched leadership transitions in modern Black church history.
Why This Tour Is Her Defining Move
Every new leader gets a defining moment. For Sarah Jakes Roberts, The Rogue Route may be it.
Consider what the tour represents: her first major public undertaking since the accident, her first big tour as the co-senior pastor of The Potter’s House, and a statement about what her leadership looks like — not a replica of her father’s pulpit ministry, but a movement built on vulnerability, conversation, and women’s spiritual formation.
The contrast is instructive. T.D. Jakes built his legacy on preaching — sermons that filled arenas and defined an era of Black church life. Sarah Jakes Roberts is building hers on something adjacent but distinct: the honest, unfiltered conversation. Woman Evolve’s appeal has always been its refusal to perform perfection. The tour’s very name — born from a season in which “the usual way of showing up just wasn’t working” — doubles down on that identity.
There is also the matter of the accident itself. A leader who tells her followers “one disc up or one disc lower, and this would’ve been a different testimony” is a leader who has stared at her own fragility. That kind of testimony — survival, gratitude, a body that healed — tends to deepen, not diminish, a pastor’s authority with the people who love her. The tour is, in a real sense, the testimony made kinetic: she is walking, traveling, and preaching the recovery she described.
What Woman Evolve Has Become
For readers new to the movement: Woman Evolve began as Sarah Jakes Roberts’ personal blog, a place where she processed the wounds of her past in public. At twenty-three, she had faced insecurities, teen pregnancy stigma, low self-esteem, toxic relationships, and depression. Her message — that she had two options, “settle or evolve,” and chose to evolve — resonated far beyond what a blog usually reaches.
Today, she is a New York Times bestselling author, a TIME 100 Next honoree, a wife, a mother, a businesswoman, and the co-senior pastor of The Potter’s House of Dallas. Woman Evolve has grown into a global community of women drawn to its blend of faith, candor, and personal transformation — and its annual conference ranks among the largest gatherings for Black women of faith in the country.
The Rogue Route extends that community beyond the conference model. Seven cities. Seven theaters. Conversations instead of sermons, or at least conversations alongside them.
Looking Ahead
The tour wraps October 28 in San Antonio. Then comes the longer horizon: Woman Evolve’s planned return to Atlanta in 2027, and the continuing work of leading The Potter’s House into its next chapter.
For gospel watchers, the questions are obvious and worth asking honestly. Can Sarah Jakes Roberts define a leadership era distinct from her father’s towering legacy? Can a tour born from a season of suffering become a movement that outlasts the moment? The answers will come city by city, starting Monday night in Detroit.
One thing is already clear: six months after a trampoline accident nearly paralyzed her, Sarah Jakes Roberts is not sitting out the season. She’s going rogue — and taking seven cities with her.
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