Church Leadership

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     Rev. Karen Gray-Sheffield is employed by St. John Providence Health System and serves as a Corporate Director of Open Arms Grieving Children’s Program and the Infant Mortality Program.  Open Arms is a program dedicated to providing support to crime victims and counseling to grieving children and their families. Open Arms strives to educate the community on the issue and impact of bereavement on children.  The Infant Mortality Project is a collection of free programs that work to empower families by making a connection with mothers, fathers and other family members to help strengthen and preserve families, reverse the high infant mortality rate among African Americans, promote literacy and increase access to prenatal care.
          Rev. Sheffield has a Bachelors degree in Human Development and Relations and a Masters of Arts degree in Counseling Education both from Wayne State University.  She is a Limited Licensed Professional Counselor as well as a Certified Bereavement Counselor.  Additionally, she is a licensed and ordained minister and serves as Senior Pastor of New Galilee Missionary Baptist Church on the Eastside of Detroit.
            Rev. Sheffield loves helping to empower families and has provided numerous workshops as well as individual and family counseling to families.  Through her work, she has helped to build positive bridges between faith-based institutions and the community.  She believes in “helping others to help themselves”.  In her role as a minister, she helped to develop collaboration between five churches, on the eastside of Detroit, which provided after-school activities for over three hundred children.
         Rev. Sheffield has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Caring for Children Angel Award, Spirit of Detroit Award, Sojourner Foundation’s Women Helping Women Award, and was selected in 2000 by the Women’s Informal Network, Wayne County Commissioner’s, and City Council as One of the Most Influential Black Women in Metropolitan Detroit. In 2013 she received the Women of Excellence Award from the Michigan Chronicle.