John Drew Sheard Jr. (born January 1, 1959)[1] is an American pastor and minister from Detroit, Michigan, who is the current presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, a six million-member predominantly African-American Holiness Pentecostal denomination that has now grown to become one of the largest African-American Pentecostal denominations in the United States.

[5] He also previously served as a member of the General Board, the twelve bishops who make up the national COGIC Board of directors, and as the president of the COGIC International Youth Department, the auxiliary ministry department of the denomination focused on youth and young adults, from 1997 to 2001.

[1] He was raised as a Pentecostal Christian in the Church of God in Christ with his younger brother, Ethan Blake Sheard, who is also a pastor and bishop in the COGIC denomination.

Her mother, noted gospel choir director Mattie Moss Clark, served as the international music department president of COGIC.

[5][7] In 2008, Sheard received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree, and in 2007 was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers.

In 2001, he was appointed by the late Presiding Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson as vice chairman of the Auxiliaries in Ministry (AIM) Department.

[13][7] In his first year as presiding bishop in 2021, in order to combat debt that the church had accrued from previous years, Sheard helped to launch the I Love My Church initiative, which was a fundraising campaign that helped the COGIC denomination to pay off much of its debts, renovate and refurbish its headquarters church, Mason Temple (named after the COGIC's founder, Bishop Charles H. Mason), establish housing complexes for low-income families throughout Shelby County, Tennessee, near the church's headquarters, and purchased a former Catholic nunnery convent in Memphis to provide housing for single mothers affected by health challenges, disabilities, teen pregnancies, and domestic violence.

Blake Ministry Initiatives (formerly the Urban Initiatives program; the church renamed the ministry program in honor of Presiding Bishop Emeritus Charles E. Blake), to help local church ministries and jurisdictions find effective ways to combat social and racial injustices that affect Black people and people of color; ministry programs focused on effectively teaching COGIC laymembers sound biblical Christian doctrine and on seeking how to be filled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and that places greater emphasis on evangelism, holiness teaching, and Gospel preaching through Bible study and Sunday school; establishing ministry programs to help COGIC pastors and ministers to acquire affordable formal education from interdenominational and ecumenical Christian religious seminaries; and Bishop Sheard has also helped to establish ministry programs to help local churches and jurisdictions address issues with abortion and teen pregnancy among Black people and people of color, and members of COGIC as well.

Drew, II is a musician and producer who often plays the drums and piano for the Clark Sisters, and other gospel singers and groups.

In 2001, his wife Karen Clark-Sheard was faced with a life-threatening crisis when a blood vessel burst during a scheduled bariatric surgery.

The coma lasted three and a half weeks, but Clark-Sheard says she made a miraculous recovery, which Bishop Sheard attributed to prayer and to "God's grace and healing power.