Written by: Anaya Parker
When the local Easter pageant, SonRise, started on Southern Adventist University’s campus 28 years ago, it attracted around 2,000 people, according to Ed Wright, who served as senior pastor of the Collegedale Church of Seventh-day Adventists at the time.
On Saturday, the annual tradition continued, this time drawing more than four times the amount of individuals who attended the first pageant. SonRise staffers counted 8,146 tickets at this year’s SonRise finale, a resurrection scene recurring throughout the day in Iles P.E. Center.
SonRise is an interactive experience that takes visitors through the final moments of Christ’s time on Earth. Saturday’s event was the 27th such Easter production put on by the Collegedale Church of Seventh-day Adventists and the university. The entire program is free of charge, though tickets are required.
SonRise debuted on April 6, 1996, as an evangelistic effort to share the gospel with community members. The production was first directed and inspired by then student Heather Aasheim Hilliard who envisioned staging an Easter pageant similar to one she saw at an Adventist Conference.
Wright returned this year as director of the production. In an interview with the Accent, he reminisced about how it all started.
Wright said, “[Heather] came up to me at that spring concert and just said, ‘Hey, I [have] this idea. What do you think?’”
He considered the conversation an answer to prayer, and the rest is history.
“I just thought it was a great way for us to focus on Christ’s resurrection,” Wright said during the interview. “As Adventists, historically, we have not done that. We are so afraid that that is going to lead to some Sunday worship thing that we have kind of shied away.”
Sherrie Williams, who has served in several directorial positions for SonRise over the years, wrote a brief history of the pageant, citing many of the significant changes and describing the event’s growth since its inception.
According to Williams’ records, the first SonRise began at 9:30 a.m., with seven programs and 400 tickets available for each showing. The following year, the church offered 10 shows, with 450 tickets available for each.
Attendance rose from 6,000 in 1999 to 9,000 in 2000. By 2004, 8,000 tickets were gone in 48 hours. The number of volunteers and people involved also continued to grow. In 1997, over 300 people participated in SonRise, and that number doubled by 2006.
Despite its popularity, the pageant has had its share of challenges. The first year, SonRise was nearly canceled due to rainy weather. Another year, a tornado touched down the morning of the production, yet that did not stop the program from continuing.
Since 1996, SonRise has only had to move programs inside once due to rain.
“I’ve often thought that God must have His hand on it, because many times the weather forecast right up to the day of [the event] was not good,” Wright said. “We have seen clouds go around us and heavy weather in Chattanooga, but not here.”
SonRise also has undergone several changes over the years, but remarkably, much of the initial program is the same.
Wright said, “The overall route is unchanged, the number of scenes is unchanged … the overall script has not changed.”
The pageant has impacted not only the viewers, but the volunteers, he added.
“What wasn’t really a part of the original dream but has been an incredible blessing is that it brings all of these communities together,” he said. “ … The bulk of the acting is students, and yet it brings families from the community, all churches, [all ages].”
Eliana Hounslow, a sophomore nursing major, has participated in the pageant for several years.
“SonRise made everything come to life in my eyes,” said Hounslow. “Seeing strangers come together all for one cause really made me think about the truth behind the people back then.
“ … It was a lot of strangers coming together who didn’t know each other,” she continued, “but were united under one thing: Jesus.”
Despite setbacks and challenges over the years, people return again and again to participate and see the pageant. Wright is no exception.
“When I go through, I’m still touched,” he said. “We know what’s coming. We’ve seen the script; we’ve seen much of this many times. But the story is still life-changing.”