Charles Edward Blake Sr. (born August 5, 1940) was the Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, an 8.8 million-member Pentecostal-Holiness denomination, that has now grown to become one of the largest predominantly African American Pentecostal denominations in the United States. On March 21, 2007, he became the Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Inc., as a result of Presiding Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson's death. In a November 2007 special election, he was elected to complete the unexpired term of his predecessor as Presiding Bishop. In November 2008, Bishop Blake was re-elected to serve a four-year term as Presiding Bishop. In November 2012, Bishop Blake was re-elected again to serve a four-year term as the Presiding Bishop. He was reelected to a third term as Presiding Bishop on November 15, 2016. On October 23, 2020, Bishop Blake announced that he would not seek a re-election as Presiding Bishop nor as a member of the General Board and that he would retire from the Office of Presiding Bishop and from the General Board in 2021. He officially retired on March 19, 2021, and was succeeded by Bishop J. Drew Sheard, Sr. as Presiding Bishop on March 20, 2021.