Impact Detroit Magazine Impact Detroit Magazine 2013 | Page 72

Living a Lifestyle of
Impact Giving Back
Karen, Please share with our readers what
inspired you to Give Back.
Thanks Cheryl for the opportunity. I have always
wanted to give back. My husband (Bishop J.
Drew Sheard) and I have done outreach through
our Church and individual ministries for years. I
have been tremendously blessed and after all, it’s
our job to be a blessing. It has truly become
natural for me to Give Back.
Talk about when you decided to involve a
Giving Back segment in your television
show The Sheards and why?
Because of my upbringing, my parents (Pastor
Elbert Clark and Dr. Mattie Moss Clark) always
taught us to give and help. To me and my
siblings, it was just ministry and just what we
were supposed to do. We grew up in church and
were taught as early as I can remember to
always help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Then, it was being married young, to an amazing
young preacher (Bishop J. Drew Sheard).
When my husband started pastoring and I
became first lady, I saw an even deeper need to
help and minister to people on so many levels.
Being a woman, of course, I related best to
women, and God has blessed me with gifts and a
platform to be able to touch lives with his gifts. I
have long carried a “spiritual burden” to want to
reach out to people, women in particular, who
are faced daily with struggles I have been
fortunate enough not to have experienced and I
don’t take that lightly.
I shared some of my heart with the BET
producers and together we came up with an
episode where I could do outreach and ministry,
further using the blessed platform of television to
minister to those outside of the ch urch.
How were you impacted when you
discovered that the CEO of the selected
nonprofit not only had a need for funding

Karen Clark - Sheard
in order to continue the good work of the
organization, but was in fact homeless and
in dire need herself, having lost
everything?
I was truly overwhelmed. Cheryl, so many of us
take for granted what we have and how God has