Photo Credit:Associated Press
Bishop T.D. Jakes has announced his departure as senior pastor of The Potter's House in Dallas, five months after suffering what he described
as a "massive heart attack" during a November 2024 sermon. The 67-year-old religious leader revealed Sunday that his daughter Sarah
Jakes Roberts and son-in-law Touré Roberts will assume leadership as senior pastors beginning July 2025.
"You have been faithful to God, and you have been faithful to me," Jakes told his congregation, fighting back tears according to NBC DFW. "And
I'm so grateful."
The announcement marks a significant transition for the megachurch Jakes founded in 1996, which now boasts over 30,000 members across multiple locations including Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denver.
Jakes will remain on The Potter's House Board of Directors while shifting focus to broader initiatives. "I cannot afford, especially after November, to risk something happening to me, and you be sheep without a shepherd," he explained during Sunday's service.
His daughter responded emotionally to the announcement: "As your pastor-elect, co-senior pastor elect, I'm grateful, I'm honored as your daughter," Sarah Jakes Roberts said, embracing her father.
According to a Potter's House spokesperson, this succession plan had been developing for years, with deliberate steps including the Roberts family relocating from Los Angeles to Dallas and the 2022 transition from Jakes' "Woman, Thou Art Loosed" ministry to his daughter's "Woman Evolve" platform.
During a March 2025 appearance on Today, Jakes detailed his November health crisis: "I didn't really realize what was happening to me onstage
until I got to the hospital in an ambulance. And the doctor leaned over in my ear and said, 'You've had a massive heart attack.'"
The bishop revealed the severity of his condition: "The right side of my heart had completely stopped giving blood at all. And as long as I was up preaching, I felt fine. But when I sat down, the adrenaline dropped and it exposed the fact that I was preaching with half of my heart closed with a clot."
His doctor reportedly told him, "Five minutes later I'd have been dead on arrival."
In a social media statement following Sunday's announcement, Jakes articulated his vision: "As we look across our great nation and survey the unyielding economic, societal and spiritual needs visiting our communities, it's clear that we can't afford to squander the potential of our youth or the elders who have paved the way."
The Jakes family released a letter framing the transition as part of a strategic evolution: "Today marks the continuation of our willingness to evolve as a church and step into broader roles to make certain we continue to meet the needs of this sensitive moment in our collective history."
As his successors prepare to lead The Potter's House, Jakes indicated he will expand his focus through the T.D. Jakes Group on "job creation and
21st century workforce readiness, investing in the infrastructure of communities nationwide, lifting communities up from the margins to the center."
"Together," the family statement concluded, "we shall unite for the betterment of this generation and the ones that follow."