Arise: Women experience community, celebrate God’s faithfulness

Angela Alday attended the Arise AZ Conference in September for the first time at the invitation of her sister, who had gone the year before.

From Tucson, the sisters made a trip of it, driving up on Thursday to enjoy Sedona before joining about 725 other women at the conference Sept. 20-21.

“I typically don’t take time off during the school year,” said Alday, who is an assistant principal. “But I felt the Lord asking me to step into something and renew my soul.”

This year marked the fifth Arise women’s conference, with this year’s theme, Never Alone, inspired by Isaiah 41:10. As speakers shared on stage and in breakout sessions about the faithfulness of God, women also got to experience community with one another. About 120 churches were represented by attendees, said Shannon Jennings, the chair of the Arise planning team.

“Our state is so large and so spread out,” Jennings said. “We have Phoenix and Tucson that are large cities, but the majority of our state is isolated, and I think this brings us all together.”

The first Arise Conference took place in October 2020, outside on a football field with hand sanitizer in abundant supply. Since then, attendance at Arise has roughly doubled in size.

The Arizona Mission Network of Southern Baptists has supported the conference from the beginning. Both the network and the North American Mission Board (NAMB) helped cover costs that exceeded income from ticket sales, Jennings said.

A team of about 10 women planned the conference, with about 50 volunteers assisting during the event — including teenagers from Aletheia Church in Sedona who took photos, ran slides, filmed sessions and drove golf carts, Jennings said. Most of the worship band also came from Aletheia Church.

Since the beginning, Arise has platformed speakers from Arizona. This year, 23 Arizona women taught breakout sessions.

In fact, when Catherine Renfro, the Georgia-based national director of women’s evangelism at NAMB and one of the planned main session speakers, had the unexpected opportunity to adopt a newborn that forced her to cancel with Arise, Jennings knew she had a roster of 20-plus other women she could ask to speak.

“Arizona speakers know Arizona women,” Jennings said. “And that’s one thing that is a little different from other conferences. Our conference works really hard to have Arizona speakers.”

This year, Cherie Wagner, an Arizona Bible study teacher and writer, spoke during the main sessions, while several other women shared stories of God’s work in their lives.

Anna Reynolds attended Arise with other women from her church. She said that after a long season of caregiving for her parents, along with her own illness, it was encouraging to hear others’ testimonies about walking with God through difficulty.

“It really hit home,” Reynolds said, adding that during her own difficult season, she experienced guidance from the Holy Spirit. “I’m not the only one that things have happened to, and there is no explanation other than there is a higher power that looks out for all of us.”

Jennings said there were many women who received prayer at the conference, with about 25 receiving a free Bible.

“I saw women who just needed to be together,” Jennings said. “Our world is so divided. They just needed to be together and worship. … You could feel the Holy Spirit there, and you could feel the brokenness of the women there, as well as the need for community and the Savior.”

Alday from Tucson is planning to return next year and bring her 20-year-old daughter with her.

“I called my daughter while I was there and said, ‘Next year, we are all going,’” Alday said.

Registration for Arise 2025 is open at ariseaz.com. Early bird tickets cost $40.

Johanna Willett, a freelance writer living in Tucson, is a member of Mountain View Baptist Church, Tucson.