Conference is another ROAR-ing success!

ROAR 2025 gathered hundreds of women to pursue purpose, embrace identity, and encounter God through worship, teaching, prayer and community, reports Thamani-Rae

ROAR is Coventry Elim’s annual women’s conference and Aspire regional event. The 2025 gathering, themed ‘Immeasurably More’, was held at Warwick Arts Centre, located at the heart of the University of Warwick.

This year’s theme was the perfect segue from the previous year’s conference which was titled ‘Speak Life’. ‘Immeasurably More’ was a call to action, encouraging women to move from speaking to action, from dreams to execution, and from belief to boldly stepping into all God has prepared for his daughters.

This was the first time ROAR was held at the Warwick Arts Centre, yet the space felt like home. This new venue was an answer to prayer and had been a step of faith for the team, birthed out of passion and necessity, as in the past years we’d turned women away due to capacity limitations. As a result, this year we were able to welcome an additional 200 women!

The Holy Spirit certainly went ahead and prepared the space for women to come and encounter the Father in a special way. From the outset, the atmosphere was pregnant with hope and expectation. Volunteers welcomed attendees, guiding them through registration, refreshments, and offering personalised cards prepared by Coventry Elim’s prophetic team, who had prayed and sought words for each delegate. Worship was led by Sam Blake and the Coventry Elim team, preparing hearts for what God had in store. Artist Helen Yousaf contributed powerful spontaneous artwork, led by the Holy Spirit.

The conference also spotlighted the transformative work of Compassion, featuring the moving testimony of a former Compassion-sponsored child, now a UK civil servant, emphasising the impact of releasing children from poverty through sponsorship.

The keynote speaker was Nona Jones, who delivered two powerful sessions. Her first message, ‘Relentlessly Unqualified’, drew from the story of the Canaanite woman, emphasising her perseverance despite rejection. Nona encouraged attendees to be relentless in their pursuit of purpose, to humble themselves, and stop waiting for others to validate their calling. She challenged the audience not to live as duplicates but to embrace their original, God-given identities. The key takeaway was to activate one’s calling with urgency, regardless of perceived qualifications, as God’s glory shines through our inadequacies.

The second session, ‘The Power of Petty Prayers’, explored the authenticity of David’s raw prayers in Psalm 35. Nona urged women to bring their real, unfiltered emotions to God, as he already knows the state of our hearts. Instead of reacting in offence, we were encouraged to release situations to God, trusting him to handle any injustice. Nona shared real-life examples of how she herself has seen this play out both in times that she’s walked in obedience and when she’d missed the mark! Her vulnerability and candour about her own experiences made her teachings deeply relatable and impactful.

The ‘Immeasurably More’ life calls us to relentlessly pursue the call of God over our lives with audacity and humility whilst guarding our hearts from the dangers of offence by remaining open and honest with God about our struggles along the way and not allowing the lack of gifting to intimidate us from accepting our callings!

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.