Written by Abbey Williams // Graphic by Cooper Turman, photo provided by Bloom Conference
Harding has hosted the Bloom Women’s Conference for 28 years, and this year the event will be held Feb. 17-18 with the theme, “When God Authors Your Story.”
Two USA Today bestselling Christian authors, Serena B. Miller and Tamera Alexander, will speak at this year’s event and have a book signing, according to the conference’s webpage.
Co-director of the conference and associate professor of Bible Anessa Westbrook said Bloom aims to equip and help women grow spiritually.
“The Bloom conference is a national level conference,” Westbrook said. “We do have a number of church groups that come from different states. We are always trying to think about equipping, encouraging them to go back into their churches and to contribute.”
Westbrook said the committee likes to have students work with them.
“We also try to keep some students on our committee so we can get their perspective, but we also mentor them,” Westbrook said. “We currently have a group of students interested in Christian publishing on it.”
Senior Karrisa Neal runs the social media for Bloom this year. She said it’s her first year on the committee, and she gives student perspective when needed.
Neal said she has been to past Bloom conferences with her church family.
“I think of Bloom like a family reunion,” Neal said. “It’s like, dare I say, ‘pre-heaven,’ but then you have the spiritual aspect of it. Everyone is just together, and you’re cultivating these relationships that you would never meet because they’re from across the nation, and you kinda just remember you have that unifying bond in Christ.”
Neal said there’s always something to connect to in the classes.
“This year I’m speaking in one of the breakout classes, which is crazy, but like every year even if I’m not super passionate about the topics, there’s still something you can connect to,” Neal said. “It meets you where you’re at. It’s like this universal key; it just applies to your situation.”
Harding admissions counselor Jessica Berry, who is a worship leader for Bloom, said the conference builds up women’s ministry.
“We also build up women’s ministry and say yes, you can do things,” Berry said. “So our two keynote speakers are Christian authors, and they have a movie. We have these superstar women, and we say, ‘Yes, you can go do a lot of things and still love the Lord passionately.’”
Berry said Bloom is very intentional with picking out speakers.
“Bloom is like a learning experience because we’re very intentional about bringing in speakers that walked a path that may be different from our typical crowd,” Berry said. “We also just reinforce love and how Christ goes about and seeks individuals that may not be popular or we may not think of on a daily basis, so we try to put those types of people in front of these ladies.”
