Log in

'Do you hear what I hear?'

By NANCY FRAZIER O'BRIEN

Ministry staff members are singing out in hospital atriums and community theaters. Hospital-sponsored glee clubs with highly polished pipes and loosely organized groups of performers are entertaining colleagues and patients with instrumentals, gospel medleys, Christmas carols, oldies and pop tunes.

"Music is healing, empowering, comforting," said Sr. Paula Terese Pilon, CSJ, coordinator of workplace spirituality, hospital chaplain and member of the Resounding Spirit Choir at Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, Mich., a member of Ascension Health. "There are so many ways that music can touch people's lives."

The Borgess Resounding Spirit Choir performs in downtown Kalamazoo, Mich., as part of the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music.

A universal chord
The Borgess choir is led by music director Jeffrey Spenner, a graduate student in orchestral conducting at Western Michigan University and assistant conductor of the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra.

"Inspirational music is the core of our repertoire," said Spenner. "Our mission statement is to be part of holistic health care that nourishes the body, mind and soul, so we choose pieces that represent that mission statement."

The Resounding Spirit Choir began last year with just a handful of members and now has nearly three dozen members and continues to grow, Spenner said.

Dr. Robert Hill, an emergency and trauma center physician who is vice president of medical affairs at Borgess, helped organize the choir and is a member.

"We've had some extraordinary experiences," Hill said, such as singing to stroke patients in the hospital's neurorehabilitation unit. Patients who normally would not have been very responsive to stimulation responded to the music, he said. "It brought several individuals to tears."

This year, those on Borgess' Christmas card list will receive a card picturing the choir along with a mini audio-CD with several of their songs.

Linda Root, vice president, mission integration at Borgess Health and executive sponsor for the Resounding Spirit Choir, said the choir fits in well with Ascension's goal of "building a model community of inspired associates."

"It's a great community builder, a great healing tool, and a unique avenue for change in the health care system," she said. "So often we get caught up in the technical aspects (of health care) that we lose sight of something so simple."

The Borgess choir is still in its infancy, but the Mercy Philadelphia Gospel Choir has been around for at least 30 years, with some of its nine members being a part of the choir for two decades or more.

"I feel we are blessed to work in a place where we can sing," said Jan Jackson, who works in the critical care unit at Mercy Philadelphia Hospital and has been a member of the choir since 2005. After a performance, she said, "colleagues will come up and grab me and hug me and say they were at the program and were going through some things. We're ministering to them through song. That is what it is all about. We love it."

Sr. Suzanne Gallagher, RSM, is vice president, mission integration at Mercy Philadelphia Hospital, part of CHE Trinity Health. She said the gospel choir performs at prayer services for holidays such as Martin Luther King Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mercy Heritage Day and "any other time we feel people need to come together." The concerts usually take place in the hospital lobby but are broadcast to patients' rooms and throughout the hospital.

"It enhances our prayer so much because the music that the gospel choir takes up is so beautiful," Sr. Gallagher said. "They provide a richness to these special prayer services that we would not have. I can't imagine having these prayer services without our gospel choir."

Because the choirs draw from various departments of the hospital, they also serve a community-building function,
bringing together people who might never encounter one another in their day-to-day work.

The SSM Mission Glee Choir, in existence since 2011, brings together staff members from seven different hospitals in the SSM Health Care – St. Louis system. "People who would never have met each other have now become great friends," said Kristen Johnson, an SSM – St. Louis spokeswoman and a glee choir member.

The SSM choir features full production numbers, including choreography, for contemporary songs like Katy Perry's "Firework" and "Good Time" by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen or oldies like Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" or "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge. Sometimes the words of the song are adapted to the situation or toned down if they are deemed too racy or violent.

The choir performs for corporate mission days and other celebrations such as retirements or promotions, as well as holiday concerts open to all. Johnson, a dancer, describes herself as "tone-deaf" and said she helps with the choreography.

For the last number of a mission days show, the health system leaders came onstage in a big flashy finale — singing "We Are Family"— and went up aisles dancing and out into the lobby area, where they greeted people leaving the auditorium. "It was a little silly and fun," Johnson said.

The choir at Springfield Regional Medical Center in Springfield, Ohio, is much more loosely organized, but there has been plenty of interest from staff. More than 50 hospital staff members have sung with the choir in its first year. The hospital is part of Catholic Health Partners.

Bill Everingham, a member of the maintenance staff at Springfield Regional, put the group together. He said he would "always hear people singing when I was walking up and down the halls" and "thought it would be neat to get something together." With the approval of the health system's mission council, the choir began to perform at Easter and Thanksgiving.

"I've always loved to sing," he said. "I come from a background where the family sings when we have family get-togethers and I'm in the choir at church. Singing is just a way for us to praise the Lord, and I love to do it."

Everingham is looking for someone with more organizational skills to take over leadership of the choir. Most hospital choirs schedule a concert during the Christmas season, but Everingham said this is a "hectic time" for him because his long, white beard makes him a popular Santa.

At Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, Wis., a member of Ascension Health, an ad hoc group has been Christmas caroling throughout the hospital for at least 15 years, accompanied by guitar, flute and sometimes other instruments.

The Rev. Phil Dewitt, an Evangelical Free Church minister who is a chaplain at the hospital, has been doing it for 10 years and finds the experience a way to "live the healing ministry of Jesus."

Each year, whoever wants to sing gathers in the hospital chapel for a warm-up session — televised throughout the hospital — of two Christmas readings from Scripture and three carols. The group then carols through the hallways of the hospital and meets for punch and cookies at the end.

"I think of Jesus walking the halls of the hospital, and I get the sense of that when we are doing this," Rev. Dewitt said.

View these on YouTube:

• Borgess Resounding Spirit Choir singing “Amazing Grace,” April 29, 2013.
• Borgess Resounding Spirit Choir singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth”
• Mercy Philadelphia Hospital’s Gospel Choir performance.