COGIC — A History of the Church of God in Christ

The Story

Chapter 01

Framed portrait of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason — **Bishop Charles Harrison Mason** (1864–1961), founder of the Church of God in Christ. Portrait courtesy of the Center for African & African American Research, Duke University.

Charles Harrison Mason was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, to formerly enslaved parents, and began his ministry as a Baptist preacher. In 1895 he joined forces with Mississippi preacher Charles Price Jones, and the two began preaching holiness and entire sanctification — a message their Baptist convention would not tolerate. Both men were expelled for it.

Undeterred, they gathered a new fellowship. Revivals held in an abandoned cotton gin in Lexington, Mississippi, drew some sixty converts, and in 1897 the movement was organized. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Mason said God gave him a name for it, drawn from 1 Thessalonians 2:14: the Church of God in Christ.

In 1906, Mason traveled to Los Angeles to investigate the Azusa Street Revival led by William J. Seymour. He stayed five weeks and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When he brought Pentecostal teaching home, the fellowship split — and in November 1907, in Memphis, Mason reorganized COGIC as a Pentecostal church, becoming its General Overseer and Chief Apostle. He would lead it for 54 years.

From Memphis, the church rode the Great Migration north and west, planting congregations in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and beyond — carried by preachers Mason credentialed and by ordinary saints who took their faith with them.

Founder: Bishop Charles Harrison Mason
Founded: 1897 · Lexington, Mississippi
Organized: 1907 · Memphis, Tennessee
Headquarters: Mason Temple, Memphis
Presiding Bishop: Bishop J. Drew Sheard Sr. (since 2021)
Members: 6.5 million reported worldwide

Timeline

Chapter 02 · 1895 — Today

1895

Mason meets Jones

Mason joins forces with Mississippi preacher Charles Price Jones. Together they preach holiness and sanctification across the South, until the Baptist convention expels them for it.

1897

A fellowship in Lexington

Revivals in an abandoned cotton gin in Lexington, Mississippi, gather some sixty converts. Mason and Jones organize the fellowship that takes the name Church of God in Christ — Mason founds St. Paul Church in Lexington as its first congregation.

1906–07

Azusa Street changes everything

Mason travels to the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, led by William J. Seymour, and receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit. His Pentecostal teaching splits the fellowship in 1907 — Mason keeps the COGIC name and charter, reorganizes the church in Memphis that November, and leads it as the first legally chartered Pentecostal body in the United States.

1925

A temple for the convocation

COGIC completes its first national temple in Memphis to host the annual Holy Convocation. The wooden temple burns in 1936 — and the church decides to rebuild in steel and stone.

1945

Mason Temple dedicated

The new Mason Temple — with its nearly 4,000 seats, the largest church auditorium of any African American religious group in the country — is dedicated as the church's international headquarters, financed by everyday members: sharecroppers, cotton pickers, and domestic workers who gave what they had.

1961

The founder goes home

Bishop Mason dies on November 17, 1961. The movement he led for 54 years has grown to more than 400,000 members and over 4,000 churches, with congregations across the world.

1968

"I've Been to the Mountaintop"

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his final speech at Mason Temple, standing with Memphis sanitation workers on strike. He is assassinated the next day.

Today

The fire keeps spreading

Under Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard Sr., COGIC counts a reported 6.5 million members in more than 100 countries. The Holy Convocation — held in Memphis for over a century — returns to St. Louis for 2026–2028, and Mason Temple remains the church's spiritual home.

Mason Temple

Chapter 03 · Memphis

Elder Samuel Kelsey preaching at a Church of God in Christ service in Mississippi, 1942 — **Worship, 1942.** Elder Samuel Kelsey preaching at a Church of God in Christ service in Leake County, Mississippi. Photo: Library of Congress, via the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Built between 1940 and 1945 — in the middle of a world war and a shortage of building materials — Mason Temple was paid for by the people of the church, many of them poor, who believed the movement deserved a house. When it opened, it was the largest church auditorium of any African American religious group in the United States.

A generation later, the temple became a landmark of a second movement. During the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike, Mason Temple was the movement's meeting place — and on April 3, it hosted Dr. King's last speech.

It still serves as COGIC's international headquarters: a room where revival history and civil rights history share the same walls.

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop."
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mason Temple, April 3, 1968

The Legacy

Chapter 04 · Seal · Sound · Spirit

The official seal of the Church of God in Christ, Inc.

The Seal of the Church

The official seal — designed in 1973 and adopted by the General Assembly in 1981 — pictures a shaft of garnered wheat: the people of the church. The rope binding the shaft is Bishop Mason, who at the call of the Lord banded the churches together in 1907. The date marks his baptism in the Holy Ghost in March 1907, and the rain behind the wheat is the Latter Rain — the end-time revivals that gave birth to the Pentecostal movement.

Seal © Church of God in Christ, Inc., shown here for educational identification. This is an unofficial tribute site and is not affiliated with COGIC, Inc.

The Sound

COGIC sanctuaries became conservatories of gospel music. The Clark Sisters, the Winans family, and generations of church musicians carried the COGIC sound — Hammond organ, tambourine, and soaring choir — into the wider world.

The Spirit

At the center, unchanged since Azusa Street: a Pentecostal faith in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, holiness of life, and a church where everybody — sharecropper or scholar — has a testimony.

The Spread

From ten congregations in 1907 to thousands today — across the United States and in more than 100 countries, gathered every year at the Holy Convocation, the church's largest annual meeting.

Updates

Chapter 05 · Live

What's happening in the church right now, and what's changed on this site. Church news comes from the COGIC Newsroom — the denomination's own NewsFeed at cogic.org — and every change to this page posts itself here from GitHub.

From the Newsroom. Fresh posts from the COGIC NewsFeed — hover a card to read more, select it to open the story at cogic.org.

Presiding Bishop Emeritus Charles E. Blake Sr. seated with Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard

COGIC Updates

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