The Church Of God In Christ is packing for St. Louis. The denomination’s 118th Annual Holy Convocation convenes November 3-10, 2026, in St. Louis, Missouri, under the theme “Answering The Call,” drawing clergy, leaders, and members from across the United States and around the world for eight days of worship, teaching, and fellowship.
It is a homecoming with history behind it. The Holy Convocation, the largest annual gathering of the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination, was held in St. Louis from 2010 to 2019 before returning to Memphis, the city the church calls its spiritual home. Now, after a vote by the denomination’s General Assembly in January 2025, the convocation is back in St. Louis for the first of a three-year run covering 2026 through 2028.
The week begins before the first session does. On Saturday, October 31, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the church will present Christmas in November, a free community outreach event at the St. Louis Urban League, 1408 Kingshighway Boulevard in St. Louis. Families and individuals will receive coats, toys, groceries, household items, and more, offered in the spirit of Christian love and service as the holiday season approaches. The event is free, and all are welcome.
Giving back to the host city first
Christmas in November is a deliberate first act. Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard has described giving back to the host community as a sacred responsibility of the church, and the St. Louis edition puts that conviction into practice before a single delegate registers.
Bishop Marquaello Futrell, the jurisdictional bishop of Missouri Eastern First, is coordinating the outreach. The effort is made possible through a partnership between the St. Louis Urban League, World Vision, and the Archdiocese of St. Louis Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, a collaboration that crosses faith and civic lines to meet the practical needs of St. Louis families.
For a denomination gathering tens of thousands of visitors in one city, the gesture matters in both directions. The host city opens its doors, its hotels, and its convention infrastructure to the church for more than a week. The church, in turn, opens its arms to the city’s families first, with winter coats and groceries rather than a program or a ticket.
A return nearly seven years in the making
The St. Louis return was decided well in advance. Delegates to the Church Of God In Christ General Assembly, the denomination’s legislative body, voted during a special session on January 13, 2025, to hold the 2026-2028 Holy Convocation in St. Louis.
Presiding Bishop Sheard welcomed the decision at the time, saying, “We are excited to return the Holy Convocation to St. Louis, a city that warmly embraced our church for a decade.” He added that St. Louis provided the infrastructure, hospitality, and resources necessary to host a gathering of this size, while noting that “Memphis will always be the spiritual home of the Church Of God In Christ.”
The timeline explains the significance. The convocation spent a historic 110-year tenure in Memphis before moving to St. Louis for the 2010-2019 run. It returned to Memphis in 2021 and was held there in the years that followed, with one final Memphis gathering in 2025 before the transition. The 2026 meeting is therefore not just another annual convention; it is the reopening of a St. Louis chapter that closed in 2019.
What the week holds
The convocation’s program spans the life of the denomination. The week’s published highlights list sessions from the International Men’s Ministry, the International Department of Women, the International Music Department, the International Department of Evangelism, the World Missions Department, the International Sunday School Department, and COGIC Urban Initiatives, alongside the work of the Adjutant General’s corps.
That breadth is the point of the gathering. The Holy Convocation is at once a worship meeting, a teaching conference, a fellowship reunion, and the church’s annual business session, where bishops, supervisors, pastors, elders, evangelists, and laity from jurisdictions across the country and overseas gather under one roof. For many delegates, it is the one week of the year when the whole church is in the same city.
Registration reflects the scale of the operation. Leadership-only registration pickup opens Monday, November 2, from 2:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Registration for all attendees opens Tuesday, November 3, from 2:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with badge and materials pickup continuing Wednesday through Friday, November 4-7, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturday, November 8, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. All pre-registration materials must be picked up by noon on Friday, November 6.
An opening day shared with Election Day
The 2026 convocation carries an unusual calendar collision: its opening day, Tuesday, November 3, is also Election Day in the United States midterm elections. Thousands of registered voters among the delegates will be in St. Louis while voters back home are at the polls.
Presiding Bishop Sheard addressed that overlap directly in a letter to the church, launching an initiative called COGIC Counts, described as an episcopal call to political responsibility. The initiative urges constituents to vote in person, by mail, or by absentee ballot, and provides a voter registration and ballot-request tool through blackchurchvotes.com/cogic. Bishop Talbert Swan II, assistant general secretary and director of social justice ministries, was appointed to chair the effort.
The message is mobilization, not partisanship. The letter calls on jurisdictional bishops, national leaders, pastors, elders, evangelists, and laity to partner in the initiative in their own states and regions, with steering committees built around three goals: registration, education, and mobilization. It is the church’s way of saying that answering the call includes answering the duties of citizenship, even while the saints are gathered in St. Louis.
Why this convocation is one to watch
Three threads make the 118th Holy Convocation worth following. The first is the St. Louis return itself, and whether a city that hosted the gathering for a decade welcomes it back with the same energy after seven years away. The second is the theme, “Answering The Call,” which frames the week as a question put to every delegate: what, exactly, is being asked of them now.
The third is the witness the church offers its host city before the convention even begins. Christmas in November, with its coats and groceries at the Urban League, is the denomination’s opening statement in St. Louis, made not from a pulpit but from a giveaway table. If the convocation is about answering a call, the church’s first answer in 2026 is service.
The gathering runs through November 10. For the Church Of God In Christ, and for the city hosting it, the week ahead is both a reunion and a test: a reunion with a city the church knows well, and a test of what the church’s largest gathering looks like in its new St. Louis home.
About the Author
