20,000 attendees expected for 2024 AME Church conference in Cincinnati

By Jason Dunn

Cincinnati Convention and Visitor’s Bureau

The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church – the largest Black Methodist denomination in America – has selected Cincinnati USA for its 2024 General Conference. Held every four years, the event is expected to draw approximately 20,000 attendees using more than 27,000 hotel room nights and delivering more than $8 million in visitor spending to the region. This represents the largest African American and religious convention booked in Cincinnati in the past decade.

Planned for July 3-10, the 2024 event will convene primarily in the Duke Energy Convention Center. Attendees will utilize many hotels across the region, including downtown’s Hilton Netherland Plaza, Hyatt Regency, Millennium, as well as Northern Kentucky’s Embassy Riverfront, Cincinnati Marriott at RiverCenter and Radisson.

In regard to the AME Church General Conference here, Bishop James Levert Davis said, “The AME Church’s mission is to minister to the social, spiritual, and physical development of all people. At the 2016 General Conference, we had a tremendous economic impact  on our host city, Philadelphia, with our goal of having  over  25,000 persons in attendance. Over the past two years, the pandemic kept us on lockdown.

“As with other institutions, organizations, various agencies, and people in general, are welcoming the opportunity to return to places, such as schools, work, gyms, restaurants and church members, too, are looking forward to coming off the hiatus. Being able  to travel to the City of Cincinnati will be like a celebration, an opportunity to breathe freely, without the looming threat of a pandemic, which has been brought under control with the aid of vaccines and other means for keeping the world population relatively safe. 

“Many of our members could not attend last year’s General Conference, and we know that they are enthusiastically looking forward to coming to our once in-every-four-years family reunion.  This gathering will generate revenue that will have  tremendous  influence on the economy of Cincinnati. 

“Being birthed out of the Free African Society, we have a special interest in the empowerment and advancement of African Americans. 

“The AME church, since its inception, has been a trusted agent for economic and social change for African Americans. We’ve been a driver of shared power in and among communities. It is significant that the church has a special interest and is reaching out to bless  those communities that so often do not have the opportunity to get a piece of the economic pie.  With this in mind, we have reached out to the African American Chamber of Commerce to help us engage with minority vendors. We look to involve minority contractors in every aspect possible of our meeting from transportation to food and beverage to decorations.

“Cincinnati has hosted us three times (1856, 1964 and 2000), and we look forward to your hospitality again. We are pleased with our partnership with the Cincinnati Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and highlight Jason Dunn, a member of Allen Temple here in Cincinnati, as well as the extraordinary Bishop Earl McCloud, his leadership team, and all the members of the Episcopal District. We express our sincere appreciation and look forward to the radical, rich, resplendent  hospitality that  we have come  to expect from this great city.

“The Family of God will be  coming out in record numbers for the first time since the pandemic.   We will be coming here to hear a Word from the Lord, as we struggle with theological issues,   governance, polity, social, economic, political and other unprecedented issues for a new day.’’