RELIGION / JOHN DART : Westlake Minister Marks 26th Sunrise Service Before Retiring

As Westlake Village began to take shape in 1968, the first minister to form a congregation in that planned community held his first service on Palm Sunday, then led an Easter sunrise service the following Sunday atop a cemetery hill.

By holding outdoor Easter rites for about 65 people and a few long-eared rabbits scampering nearby, the Rev. Robert Bos of Westlake Village was introducing a venerable Southern California tradition to its newest housing development.

This Sunday, one month before Bos retires as pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, the 26th Easter sunrise service at 6 a.m. at Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village will bring together about 1,200 worshipers from seven participating churches in Westlake Village and Agoura Hills.

From Mt. McGroarty in the Verdugo Mountains to Porter Ridge Park and Vasquez Rocks, sunrise services will recall the first Easter as described in all four Gospels. In those accounts, women followers of the crucified Jesus went to his tomb in the early dawn, at the beginning of the week, and found it empty--signaling the Resurrection that is a pillar of the Christian faith.

The crowds that assemble at chilly dawn services in the San Fernando Valley area are tiny compared to the tens of thousands who attend services at more comfortable morning hours inside churches.

And with the change to daylight-saving time scheduled for 2 a.m. Sunday, there is the chance that sunrise service crowds will be even smaller because of reduced sleeping time. Yet, it wouldn’t be the first Easter that potential worshipers were challenged to remember the changeover and adjust accordingly.

The oldest sunrise service in the Valley is the 69th annual Mt. McGroarty service in which about 400 seats are set up on that peak not far from a 20-foot cross. The service will begin at 6 a.m., but worshipers are advised to arrive much earlier at Foothill Boulevard and Hill Haven Avenue in Sunland, where vans will take people up the mountain.

The Rev. Curtis Arne of the Church of the Open Bible will give the sermon. Clergy in the Sunland-Tujunga area run the service and the local Kiwanis Club takes care of other arrangements, according to Kiwanis spokesman Jerry Friedman, the event’s unofficial historian.

“I’m Jewish, although I haven’t been active in a synagogue for years, but I’ve been helping with the service for 17 years because it’s a club project and I enjoy it,” Friedman said.

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At the 18th annual sunrise service at 6 a.m. Sunday at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Hollywood Hills, Capt. Cathryn Russell, commanding officer of the Salvation Army Corps in Burbank, will become the first woman to deliver the sermon in that observance.

About 2,000 people are expected at the Hollywood Hills service conducted each year by the interdenominational Burbank Ministerial Assn. The choir of the First Baptist Church of La Crescenta will provide the music.

Russell, a 15-year veteran of Salvation Army posts, was assigned to the Burbank congregation of about 150 members in January, 1992. Her sermon topic, alluding to the Easter story of Jesus’ raising from the dead, is “How to Cancel a Funeral.”

The service will be held near the cemetery’s Birth of Liberty Mosaic wall. Early arrivals at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive will be served free coffee and doughnuts by members of the Burbank Kiwanis Club.

At Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Glendale, a standing-room crowd of 1,100 Spanish-speaking worshipers is expected for a 6 a.m. service inside the Hall of the Crucifixion-Resurrection. The speaker will be the Rev. Camilo Gonzalez, president of the sponsoring Hispanic Baptist Churches of the Southwest. The service will include a narration in Spanish of Jan Styka’s “The Crucifixion,” in which portions of the 195-foot-long painting are spotlighted in the darkened room as the story unfolds. When the biblical story says that an earthquake occurs at Jesus’ moment of death, those seated in the room feel sound-wave vibrations to simulate the temblor--”something that’s not too popular these days,” an official admitted.

At the best-known sunrise rites, the 74th Hollywood Bowl Easter service will include a sermon by the Rev. Ignacio Castuera of First United Methodist Church of Hollywood and a performance by the Tarzana-based Bel Canto Symphony Orchestra of the fourth movement of Felix Mendelsohn’s Symphony No. 5. The service runs from 5:30 to 7 a.m.

Smaller services located far from densely populated areas include one at Val Verde Park, starting at 6 a.m. and sponsored by the Val Verde Civic Assn., and another in Lake Los Angeles, at the intersection of 178th Street East and Queensglen in the Antelope Valley, starting at 6:30 a.m. and sponsored by St. Barnabas in the Desert Lutheran Church.

At Vasquez Rocks Park near Agua Dulce, a service sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Newhall-Saugus will commence at 6:45 a.m. The speaker will be the Rev. Ron McCoy of the Santa Clarita Church of Religious Science.

Other sunrise rites organized by single congregations and to be held on public parkland include the following:

* 6 a.m., Porter Ridge Park with the Rev. Christine Beitzel of First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills speaking;

* 6:30 a.m., at the Crystal Springs area of Griffith Park with the Rev. Marlene Morris of Burbank-Toluca Lake First Church of Religious Science speaking;

* 7 a.m., in the garden area of Casa Verdugo de San Rafael Park in Glendale with the Rev. Alan Strout of Glendale First United Methodist Church speaking.

Many Protestant churches will hold early services Sunday on their own grounds or in their chapels.

Among the more unusual will be a bilingual, joint service of Valley Korean Presbyterian Church and St. Paul’s United Methodist at 6:30 a.m. in the patio of the latter church at 5619 Lindley Ave., Tarzana. A continental breakfast will be served after the service.

At Westlake Village, the ecumenical sunrise service at Valley Oaks Memorial Park, which is on Lindero Canyon Road, has changed as the crowds grew larger through the years.

The gathering is no longer held on the hilltop near the statue of a kneeling Christ, but in the parking lot of the Pierce Brothers-owned cemetery. The seated participants can still see the hilltop statue and in recent years the cemetery management has brought in sheep to graze on the hill.

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“Sometimes it’s a distraction watching the shepherd dog working the sheep,” Bos said.

Planning for the service rotates each year among the Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopal and two Catholic churches in the area.

St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church has the assignment this year and its pastor, Msgr. Peter O’Reilly, will deliver the Easter message.

Bos, who is 65 and hopes to serve in interim pastor posts during his retirement, will do one of the Scripture readings and will call for the offering.