River Hills Community Church plans lakeside Sonrise service, cantata with orchestra

“The Stone is GONE!”

How a story that took place so many years ago can have transforming qualities and practical application to our lives today helped shape Pastor Gayle Montgomery’s messages to worshippers at River Hills Community Church in Lake Wylie this Lent season.

During the weeks leading up to Easter, Montgomery said she wanted to help worshippers connect with the story of Jesus beyond the historical events.

“The current church has not done as good a job as past generations in passing faith to the next generation. As we grow older, we must consider how we do that,” Montgomery said. “We hope to deliver an ancient and timeless message in a relevant and current way.”

Beginning with a lakeside sunrise (“Sonrise”) service at Camp Thunderbird, the church will host three sermons and a series of events on Easter Sunday, including a cantata with a full orchestra under the direction of John Leon Lewis, the flowering of the cross during worship, and the releasing of butterflies by the children of the church at the conclusion of worship.

Montgomery has focused on the topic of stones in a series of sermons titled the Journey of Stones during the six weeks of Lent.

During each sermon Montgomery invited worshippers to hold a stone and identify what the stone represented for them.

“It might have represented judgment of others, empty religiosity or the rock-solid confession that 'Jesus Christ is Lord,'” she said.

As worshippers departed the sanctuary, they would lay the stone at the foot of a rough-hewn cross, signifying letting go of sin. Built by the Boy Scouts two years ago, the cross stands eight feet tall with wheels and enmeshed with chicken wire.

The sunrise services have not always occurred by the lake. The River Hills Country Club provided a space for the new community’s first sunrise service. When the neighborhood opened in the mid-70s, residents drove to Charlotte, Gastonia, York and other nearby areas to find a church of their denomination to match the teachings of their upbringing. Then on Easter Sunday morning in 1977, that changed. A group of residents had gotten together and asked the River Hills Country Club if they could set up 50 chairs on the balcony overlooking a terraced slope to host a sunrise service. The club agreed. Instead of 50 people, 200 showed up to attend the service.

“Easter was the beginning of this church,” said Kermene Yon, one of the founders of RHCC.

“My husband and I were driving all the way to East Boulevard. in Charlotte to worship. People just felt they wanted to worship with their neighbors and not drive to various places on Sunday morning.”

Yon recalls that the Rev. Grady Faulk delivered the sermon and that Bob Burke, who still resides in the community, sang a solo.

Yon and her late husband Bobby built the first home in the River Hills community in 1971.

“There were no streets to ride on to pick out your lots, only dirt roads,” Yon said.

“We call ourselves inter-denominational now, rather than non-denominational,” Pastor Montgomery said. “We all serve the same God, despite having been raised Catholic or Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist. The church’s founders looked for what united us rather than what divided us.”

“When parishioners enter the church on Easter Sunday morning, the piles of stones will be gone, symbolizing the rolling away of the large stone that sealed Jesus in the tomb,” Montgomery said. “Jesus is risen! He is alive!”

During the service, worshippers will line up to adorn the cross with fresh flowers from their gardens (“or from Publix,” Montgomery said). At the conclusion of the service, the children will lead a procession following the cross as it is rolled to the courtyard where they will release hundreds of butterflies.

“We hope that the butterflies will land on the cross,” the pastor said.

But Marcie Little, director of family ministries, said that the butterflies sometime land all over the children, who range in ages from 5 to 10 years old.

“The kids look so precious as the butterflies alight on them and flitter all around them,” Little said.

The children will watch the forming of the butterflies. “Nurturing the little tombs or chrysalis and watching little creatures morph into beautiful butterflies is an amazing symbol of resurrection,” Montgomery said. “When the children’s project began, the creatures looked like little tombs where things were dead, dark, where they had crawled in and wrapped themselves in fabric similar to burial cloth,” she added.

“’Whatever stones we carry,” said Montgomery, “whatever sin plagues us, whatever boulder weighs us down, the resurrection of Jesus proves the power of God to defeat even the mortal enemy death! Clearly, nothing is impossible with God. We arrive at the tomb Easter morning to discover the stone is GONE, new life has emerged, Jesus is alive!’”-- John 20:1-18

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 8:09 PM with the headline "River Hills Community Church plans lakeside Sonrise service, cantata with orchestra."