LOCAL

COGIC Holy Convocation won't return to Memphis in 2021, will be held online due to COVID-19

Katherine Burgess
Memphis Commercial Appeal

The Church of God in Christ has cancelled its in-person 2021 Holy Convocation, which was to return to Memphis after 11 years away.

The Holy Convocation will go forward as a virtual event. No services, meetings or events will be held and travel to Memphis is discouraged, according to a video from Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard.

The change was made due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Shelby County, the delta variant is pushing new COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations that have passed previous records set during the winter surge. There are currently 8,303 active cases in Shelby County. The active case count has never been higher throughout the entirety of the pandemic. The rolling 7-day average of new cases, per the health department, sits at 598 new cases per day.

“Please join me in praying that God will continue to sustain us during this trying time,” Sheard said.

COGIC’s return to Memphis was to be a homecoming to its spiritual roots, to the city where the annual Holy Convocation was held for more than 100 years before moving to St. Louis, with leaders in the denomination citing high hotel rates and a lack of meeting space in Memphis as reasons for the move.

Before the pandemic, the convocation was estimated to bring 30,000 to 40,000 to Memphis, people who would have been split between the FedExForum, the Memphis Cook Convention Center and Mason Temple — a church that is also the denomination’s world headquarters.

The denomination has deep roots in Memphis. Its founder and first senior bishop, Charles Harrison Mason, was born in Shelby County in 1864 to former slaves. In 1907, Mason established his work with the Church of God in Christ in Memphis. In 1945, he dedicated Mason Temple as the church’s national meeting site and international headquarters.

The Church of God in Christ has also played a major role in the history of Memphis. In 1968, Mason Temple was a meeting place for striking sanitation workers.

It was also at Mason Temple where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic “Mountaintop” speech the night before he was assassinated.

At the time of King’s speech, Mason Temple was the largest African-American controlled venue in the South.

Today, the temple is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as one of the historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement.

Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.