By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Jane Burdeshaw says that every single year of Children’s Honor Choir has been special. She gets emotional talking about it.
But some years stand out, she said — like the year she got a letter from one particular little girl.
“She said that as the choir was singing ‘I Am His Lamb’ at one of the concerts, it really dawned on her that she was His lamb,” Burdeshaw said, noting that other children also came to know Christ in a new way through the choir. “I was so moved by that and I knew we had to do the song again the next year.”
So they did — the next year and the next year and the one after that. “I Am His Lamb” became the signature song of the honor choir. And during the years there’s been story after story of lives being touched through it.
“I think of that song and I think of some sisters from Athens whose uncle passed away, an uncle they were so close to. They sang that song at his funeral,” Burdeshaw said. “And I think of another young man from Boaz who went to an Auburn game one Saturday with his grandmother and died in a car crash, and they played the song at his memorial service.”
The song has “really ministered” to people over the years, and that’s why they sang it as the benediction of the Tuesday night service at the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting Nov. 13.
The members of the Children’s Honor Choir — as many as they could gather from around the state on a school night — led worship at the service, along with alumni members from previous years and a few members of the Alabama Singing Men and Alabama Singing Women.
The special choir was to mark the 20th year since the dream for the Children’s Honor Choir was born. The first auditions were held in 1998, with the first choir touring in 1999.
‘Of the Lord’
It was birthed out of a burden that Ray Burdeshaw, then director of the office of worship leadership and church music for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said God laid on his heart.
“I felt like it would be a wonderful ministry for the children of our state, and I bounced it off a few people and they loved the idea,” he said.
In the past two decades, more than 3,000 fourth through sixth graders have gone through the choir.
“I believe the idea was of the Lord and that’s why it’s still flourishing today,” said Ray Burdeshaw, who now serves as president of Alabama Baptist Retirement Centers.
Passing the baton
His wife, Jane Burdeshaw, served as the choir’s director until several years ago when she passed the baton to Karen Gosselin, an associate and music specialist in the SBOM office of worship leadership and church music.
Jane Burdeshaw said the choir gives children — especially those from smaller churches — a unique opportunity to sing with a large group and challenge themselves musically. The choir, which is auditioned and capped each year at 158, sings challenging pieces with up to five-part harmony.
“We wanted to raise their appreciation for music and their experience with it,” she said.
And in a way the Burdeshaws were pioneers — when they first started the Children’s Honor Choir no other state had a similar program.
“We were making a journey that had never been made,” Jane Burdeshaw said. “A lot of prayer went into it — everything was unknown.”
Other programs
In the years since other states have used the choir as a model to start their own. And it expanded into other programs in Alabama too. As the children got older Ray Burdeshaw created similar choirs for youth.
Ashley Holmes, who now serves as minister of preschool and children at Parkview Baptist Church, Decatur, in Morgan Baptist Association, grew up through the choirs and said it was a life-changing experience for her.
“For me, the best part of it was the friendships and the relationships I built,” she said. “When I was a kid, social media wasn’t what it is now and I only got to see those friends once a year.”
Because of that, when her senior prom and the choir fell on the same weekend it wasn’t a hard decision to make.
“I skipped my prom and went to choir, and I never second guessed it,” she said. “I still keep up with the friends that I made even back in fourth and fifth grade back when I started.”
Lifelong relationships
Keith Hibbs, now director of the SBOM office of worship leadership and church music, said those lifelong relationships are just one of the markers of the Children’s Honor Choir.
“Another byproduct of the choir is it broadens their horizons as far as seeing how God works on a broader scope across the state, not just their own church,” he said. “It’s a formative step for them to understand that God has gifted them, and what better way to serve Him than use those gifts that He’s given.”
Gosselin also said the song lyrics themselves teach important biblical truths that will be embedded in the children’s minds.
“We do Scripture songs with basic foundational truths so that when they get in those times of doubt and confusion in the teen years they have these foundational truths that will come back and speak louder than the world,” she said. “They leave every year with a different appreciation for who God is and for music and what it does.”
Hearing the choir sing is “a worship experience like no other,” Gosselin said.
The choir has already been selected for this year and will rehearse and tour March 1–3, 2019.
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