The Center for Leadership Excellence, in partnership with COSROW, is pleased to lift up the voices of women in ministry encouraging fellow women in ministry. Please enjoy this month’s Encouragement from Heather Locklear, pastor of Clover Garden UMC and Chestnut Ridge UMC. Anyone can sign up to receive Encouragement emails here.
His daughter was Sheerah, who built both Lower and Upper Beth-horon and Uzzen-sheerah.
(1 Chronicles 7:24, NRSV)
This is one of my favorite verses of the Old Testament. But out of 31,102 verses (according to Google) in the Bible, this is the only one where Sheerah is mentioned. And it is after a string of men that got higher billing because of the tragedy they encountered during a raid on Gath cattle. But this woman built three cities! Do you know what it must take to build three cities?!
Sheerah was born from tragedy. Her grandfather’s sons were all killed and in his sadness he “went in to his wife” and from that union, Beriah, Sheerah’s dad, was born. But from that sorrow and despair of generational trauma came Sheerah. She rose up from the ashes of despair and built something beautiful. She had to enlist workers and engineers and designers. She had to command and direct them all. To build one city would have been a miraculous thing for a woman, but she built three!
Sheerah had to be amazing, with phenomenal leadership skills and a knack for picking the right folks to work with. She had to be respected. I don’t believe she would’ve gotten all that done if she wasn’t respected by the men and women that worked for her. And if it weren’t for this one verse in scripture, we would never have even known her name or even that she was responsible for building anything.
Reflect and Take Action:
We’ve come a long way since the days of Sheerah. However, it is still difficult for women to receive the credit they deserve in the workplace and even within our churches. Women are doing the building and the rebuilding even now – within our families, our churches, and our governments!
As fellow sojourners in ministry, as we reflect on this ancient builder, what are we building in our personal contexts? Are we building biblical literacy by sharing the stories of the lesser-known women in scripture and raising awareness of the contributions of women in all of scripture? Are we helping to raise the awareness of women within our own ministry contexts? How are we, as a Conference, honoring the contributions of our women ministry builders through our appointment processes and support networks? Are we holding one another up in the way we speak of one another and interact with one another? Are we listening to and honoring the stories of those who have been othered in our communities?
Just from this one verse, I have imagined a whole life for Sheerah with all its trauma and joy and accomplishment. My prayer is that future generations won’t have to just imagine how great the women of our time were, because it will be well documented in much more than a one verse mention. But even if a one verse mention is all we get, may our work leave a positive, long-lasting legacy of the powerful movement of God’s Holy Spirit through us in all our building.
In partnership,
Center for Leadership Excellence and the Commission on the Status and Role of Women