Sarah Jakes Roberts, the 37-year-old co-senior pastor of The Potter's House in Dallas, fractured her neck while playing on a trampoline with her daughter over the weekend, an accident she said came within a single disc of a far worse outcome.
Roberts shared the news on Instagram, where she has more than 3 million followers. She described the incident as terrifying and said she would step back from public life to recover.
The injury is the second major health scare to strike the family behind one of America's largest non-denominational churches in less than a year. Her father, T.D. Jakes, suffered a heart attack during a sermon in November 2024, an event doctors later told him came within "five minutes" of killing him, the Daily Mail reported.
Roberts wrote that she was playing a game on a trampoline with her daughter Ella on Saturday when she landed on her neck. She said it popped in "several" places.
Two hospital visits and several scans followed. The diagnosis: a fractured neck and herniated discs, with what she described as endangered areas of the spine.
Roberts wrote on Instagram:
"One disc up or one disc lower, and this would've been a different testimony."
She will wear a neck brace for four to six weeks. In a separate post, she acknowledged the fear of the moment.
"Last night was scary."
Roberts also signaled she plans to take the recovery seriously, writing that she would "lie low" while she heals.
"Rest and recovery will give my body a chance to heal. I'll be lying low while I navigate this injury with wisdom."
The Potter's House, founded in 1996, draws a congregation of roughly 30,000 people, Christian Post has reported. T.D. Jakes built it into one of the most prominent megachurches in the country. Roberts and her husband, Touré Roberts, took over leadership of the Dallas church after her father's November 2024 heart attack.
That transition was not born of long-range planning alone. T.D. Jakes told People that his brush with death sharpened his urgency about succession.
"After my health incident, I didn't want the church left struggling, trying to figure out where do we go from here. I didn't want that to happen. I've seen a lot of people keep things so long that they built and then ended up killing it."
So the younger Roberts stepped into a role that already carried enormous weight, leading a congregation of tens of thousands while her father recovered. Now she faces her own recovery, barely months into the job.
Beyond the pulpit, Sarah Jakes Roberts has built a significant following as an author and speaker. Her book Woman Evolve drew on her personal story, including her experiences as a teen mother and college dropout. In a 2021 interview, she described her hope for the book's impact.
"My prayer is that this book will be a mirror for women. That they will see so many parts of themselves in it, but also to have a radical encounter with that as they turn each page."
That personal candor has helped her amass more than 3 million Instagram followers, a platform she used this weekend not for promotion but for an unvarnished account of a frightening injury.
Several details remain unclear. Roberts did not name the specific vertebrae or discs involved, nor did she identify the two hospitals she visited. The exact location of the trampoline accident, whether at a private home or elsewhere, has not been disclosed. Her account of the injury comes entirely from her own social-media posts; no independent medical confirmation has been reported.
What is clear is the margin. By Roberts' own telling, a single disc in either direction could have meant paralysis, or worse. A family that already watched its patriarch nearly die mid-sermon now faces another stretch of waiting, praying, and healing.
For a congregation of 30,000, the message is simple enough: their new pastor needs the same grace she preaches.
