Although Rev. Dr. Sherri Arnold-Graham has served as the former pastor of the historic Oberlin Baptist Church of Raleigh, where she became the first female pastor of a mainline Baptist Church in the history of that city, and has the unique distinction as the first Director of Development for a Lily Grant Shaw Divinity School, the Clairton native believes one of her highest and greatest honors was to be asked to preach at her beloved Mt. Olive First Baptist Church during the church’s revival.
“It was a huge honor to be asked back to Pittsburgh. I’m always learning when I’m with Rev. Callaway. I’ve learned the beauty and the power of the Christian fellowship. My Christian foundation was formed at Mt. Olive and being raised in a household with my parents and grandmother,” Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “God brought Rev. Callaway and me together this season.”
She continued: “My grandmother was the Mother of the church and going to church was always the norm. It was all I knew, but I found my strength in that. It’s another dimension of family life.”
Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham earned her Bachelor of Applied Arts in Personnel and Enterprise Management from Emory University in 1984 and a Master of Divinity from Shaw University Divinity School in 2007. She worked as a graduate research assistant to Dr. Gardner C. Taylor and associate professor at Shaw Divinity School for the class, “The Preaching of Gardner C. Taylor.” She earned her Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary.
Despite her Christian-centered upbringing, Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham shied away from her call to preach for more than two decades.
“I just felt that there wouldn’t be an acceptance of female pastors and I didn’t want that struggle, so I went to law school and I ran from my calling. But once I accepted it and kept in prayer, doors opened. I realized I had to take God at his word. Where he guides he provides. God’s word doesn’t return to him void. God has a plan,” she said.
She is the founder and president of the Sherri Arnold-Graham Foundation, a non-profit ministry for breast cancer awareness and support that provides free mammograms and awareness campaigns to uninsured and underinsured women in the United States, the Caribbean Islands and the United Kingdom.
“That was an assignment from God. I didn’t intend to do it. I didn’t want to be the posterchild for breast cancer awareness. My dad passed away from lung cancer, so I knew the cancer journey. God cares about health and we wanted to build collaborations. We partnered with two hospitals and we had an open-ended contract with these hospitals. We delivered meals to people’s homes for a while,” Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham said. “I wanted to champion the fact that early detection saves lives and we don’t charge anything for the services.
In 2016 Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham fulfilled a childhood dream and opened Sherri’s Crowning Glory Hairdresser & Spa. She did so by orchestrating a community development mission and purchased a 6,000 square-foot building on Fayetteville’s Restaurant Row.
“My mother was a licensed cosmetologist—she didn’t work in that professionally, she worked as a social worker—she did the family’s hair and she pressed our hair at the stove and I read about Madame CJ Walker,” Rev. Dr. Arnold-Graham said. “She was one of my she-roes.”
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