The gospel choir has performed at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, since 2014. The choir draws people from different departments throughout the hospital for about 10 performances a year.
Be careful if you get in the elevator with Cheryl Allen and start to hum.
Allen knows a joyful noise when she hears it. She's the director of the gospel choir at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System.
Allen
"I'll take it as a God thing," she says.
"Right here in the elevator with me, you have a song in your voice?" she might say.
And she might ask: "Do you want to join the gospel choir?"
Allen, a senior generalist in human resources of environmental services, has directed the gospel choir, a volunteer
position, since 2015. The choir started in 2014. It performs about 10 times a year in short concerts or at Mass in the hospital's chapel or the lobby, where the hospital added a baby grand piano last year.
The choir's big upcoming performances are a living nativity Dec. 8 and a Christmas performance Dec. 18. The choir, which can be as small as 12 singers or as large as 35, draws from departments throughout the hospital: housekeeping, nursing, surgery, guest services, and more.
Lambert
"This is an opportunity for us to really come together across multiple disciplines in different areas, different shifts and different roles and responsibilities," says Angela Lambert, the system's senior director of mission integration and formation serving the greater Baton Rouge region, and a newer member of the choir. "But we come together to create one voice. It's a ministry to each other. It's a ministry to the team members that we serve and serve alongside of, and it's a ministry to the community and the patients and families that we have a privilege to serve."
Come as you are
Lambert has assisted Allen with appropriate song selections, and they often choose from choir members' suggested favorites, or they mix things up for the occasion. "We're literally trying to still perfect 'Feliz Navidad,'" says Allen. "I kind of struggle when we get to the verses, but we sing it in its totality, just like it is."
To respect everyone's time, the choir only rehearses a couple of times before each concert, and each 30-minute rehearsal is scheduled during lunch. The singers get approval from administrators beforehand. Before performances, they'll go over parts and cues.
They're not perfect, but that's OK, Allen says. "It's more of a fun thing, because we keep God as the center. The main focus is God," she says. "And when we come into any rehearsal, there's no perfect person, only a perfect God. So everybody that sings, we are prepared for wrong notes, and we laugh with each other and love on it and just prepare on how to improve."
The gospel choir at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, performs twice in December: a Christmas concert and for the hospital's living nativity.
Lambert says the group is extremely welcoming.
"To know Cheryl, you meet her one time, and you feel like you've known her forever, and the entire team is incredible," she says. "And I love how everyone really does bring their gifts and talents together. It creates this beautiful ensemble."
In addition to singing, Allen plays the flute and saxophone. Their five children are all musical. The family attends a Baptist church, where Allen's husband is a pastor.
When she learned Our Lady of the Lake had an opening for a gospel choir director, she found herself raising her hand.
"It's God in action saying a need is here. And why not?" she recalls thinking. "So I stepped into the unknown, and there I found just a wealth of people that love and support. And that's the real, true reason that we keep it going from year to year. It's not even a labor."
Solo spotlights
The choir has a core team of people who organize and lead its productions. Some vice presidents and administrators have been among those who sing solos. The choir invites people in the audience to sing along.
While the choir's performances are streamed on the hospital's closed circuit television station, some patients are well enough to come to watch. One time, for a Christmas concert, the rehabilitation unit brought down a young woman from northern Louisiana who was recovering from a stroke. She didn't have family with her. In the middle of the performance, Allen asked if anyone in the audience wanted to sing.
The young woman reached up from her wheelchair and took the microphone and sang the traditional gospel song "I Love to Praise Him." People sang along, and her nurses watched, flabbergasted.
"They said (up until) that moment she could not hold a pencil, but in that moment, she held a microphone," says Allen. "From that moment, we watched a miracle happen.
"That was just the confirmation that what we do, and all that we do matters to the patient in that moment. It's just going to be God to show up again. And that's what I have, that anticipation of the next concert: Lord, show up again."