Submitted by Pastor Kevin Sloop

ROCKWELL — Grace Lower Stone Reformed Church will celebrate All Saints’ Sunday this weekend with three services. The first service will be the congregation’s 9 a.m. contemporary worship, the second will be the 11 a.m. traditional worship, and the third will be a 5:30 p.m. Vespers.

The Vespers will be held outside in the cemetery, which surrounds the 228-year-old stone church building. The sun will be setting during the service, and the more than 500 solar lights that have been placed at each grave stone will randomly begin to come on. Some of the members of the congregation will be dressed in period clothes at a number of headstones, imitating the parishioners who are buried in those graves. During the homily they will one at a time come before the congregation to give a synopsis of each of their lives.

Grace Lower Stone Church was organized around 1750 by early German settlers who began arriving in southeastern Rowan County in 1747 or 1748. Their current stone house of worship was completed in 1795, and is the oldest church building in Rowan County in continuous use.

The community is cordially invited to attend all of these services. The church is located at 2410 Lower Stone Church Road, Rockwell.