Just weeks before he was diagnosed with cancer, "American Idol" finalist Luke Menard tells us he was in the early stages of exploring an acting career. It was an option that had arrived almost overnight, per his instant celebrity as one of the talent show's top 12 contenders in February. | Read more Dan Craft

Even though he missed making the final round of Top 10 finalists the night of March 6, he was still Very Hot Stuff.

It didn't hurt matters, of course, that the camera seemed to love him, along with those millions of fans whose votes helped put him in reach of "Idol's" grand prize.

So an acting career seemed like a natural segue from the singing one that had put him in the national spotlight.

"I was just starting to get my foot in the door," he recalled for us earlier this week as he readied for a reunion with his best buds in the long-running a cappella group, Chapter 6 (7 p.m. Sunday at Calvary United Methodist Church in Normal).

"Then, right after my biggest audition, for 'General Hospital,' I found out I was sick …"

That diagnosis came in May: stage II of Hodgkin's lymphoma, whose symptoms first manifested themselves as a tightness in his chest, suggesting, at worst, an annoying cold.

Breathing difficulties, headaches and blurred vision followed. A chest X-ray revealed a mass that led to the cancer diagnosis.

The encouraging news: The disease is one of the most curable forms of cancer if detected early enough.

However, the thought, Luke says, of undergoing chemotherapy in Los Angeles didn't appeal to either him or his wife, Laura.

End of acting aspirations, just as it appeared something might break; beginning of the latest chapter in the rollercoaster ride (his term) that has been 2008.

The Crawfordsville, Ind., native has long been known in Central Illinois for his voice in Chapter 6, whose members (including three B-N natives, John Musick, Jarrett Johnson and music director/Luke's fill-in Mark Grizzard) crossed paths on the campus of Decatur's Millikin University a dozen years ago (the others are Nathan Pufall, Chuck Bosworth and A.D. Stonecipher).

Six years ago, Chapter 6 decided to go professional/national.

Their concert Sunday night is Menard's first reunion with the group locally since the rollercoaster left the starting gate.

"Man, if you'd told me a year ago what I would be going through this year, I would have laughed at you," he says. "I've been at the highest point of my life and the lowest point, all in the past few months."

Putting a positive spin on the odyssey, he says, "I'm learning a lot about myself. God has been teaching me all through this, to stay faithful and keep the hope."

He's also learning about the wages of celebrity-dom.

"I've learned to experience the whole media thing, of having your name all over the place" he says with a note of both resignation and bafflement. "I've had people pretend to be me (on the Internet) and just make stuff up."

The tabloid end of that exposure dogged him in the wake of his cancer diagnosis. "Some of them were saying I was dying," he says. "That's an example of how the media makes things so crazy."

His year began with his first step onto the "Idol" stage in January ("kind of my big shining moment, looking down the barrel of a camera and knowing 40 million people were watching me") and it's continued through the regular chemotherapy treatments that are slated through mid-November.

Through it all, his fellow Chapter 6 performers have been fully supportive, and they've been there when he's needed them.

On the day of his talk with us, Luke was in Nashville, pursuing what he hopes will be a record deal that will lead to a solo project in the contemporary Christian vein.

What will this mean for Chapter 6?

"With my chemotherapy schedule, there's really no way we can combine my schedule and their's right now. I have to be home 10 days a month for them, and they'll be on the road every day for the whole fall," Luke says.

Moreover, "If things go well here in Nashville, I'll have to re-evaluate my role with Chapter 6."

Until then, says Luke, "I'm just living my life one day at a time. I don't think about things too much, because if I do, I'll make myself go crazy. I've just come to realize that God put this thing in my life for a reason."

He adds: "I don't know what it is yet - whether it's to have a better story as a solo artist, or to be inspired to write songs. I don't even know if I'll ever have an answer for it.

But hope and faith trump hard-in-coming answers, says the man on the roller coaster.

"I do know that."

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At a glance

What: Chapter 6, featuring Luke Menard

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Calvary United Methodist Church, Normal

Tickets: $8

Information: (309) 452-5413