What are some of your favorite hymns?
That’s a loaded questions since there are many from which to choose. My United Methodist hymnal includes 678 hymns!
Also, the word “favorite” is misleading since it might end up being the refrain from a lesser known hymn that ends up carrying us through a challenging situation that we may be facing at a particular time. It might not have been at the top of our playlist, but it was just what we needed to help us rely on God’s presence, strength, comfort, and guidance.
For the past several decades, I have spent my Mondays scanning through the pages of the hymnal to select hymns that will help the congregation to sing our faith on Sunday morning. Most Sundays, I include three hymns for us to sing which include an opening hymn of praise, a middle hymn of reflection and prayer, and a closing hymn that sends us into our community to live out our faith.
If you do the math (52 weeks x 3 hymns per week) that means I pick 156 hymns each year for our worship services. And then there’s the special services like Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, and Holy Week services when I also need to select hymns.
Fortunately, there are some basic boundaries and guard rails to aid in the selection of hymns. Thank you, seminary! I really did pay attention in class! For example, it’s probably not a good idea to sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” for a Good Friday service or the hymn, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See” for your first Sunday at your new church.
Some of the boundaries that I find helpful are choosing hymns of praise and thanksgiving for the opening hymn, hymns of reflection and prayer for the middle hymn, and hymns of being sent forth to serve and share our faith for the closing hymn. Also, it’s good to use hymns that support the main theme of the worship service and are appropriate for the church season such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.
And on a personal level, I try to not fall into the rut of simply rotating the greatest hymns playlist. Less familiar hymns can be just as meaningful if the lyrics are appropriate to the theme and they are at least a C+ in being singable. Sometimes these hymns can grow on you over time.
Ok, this is what I’m really getting to in this focus on selecting hymns. Recently, I decided to chart all the hymns I have selected for worship services from 2015 to 2025. Again, this has been selecting three hymns every Sunday!
The first thing I discovered is that of the 678 hymns in the United Methodist hymnal, I have selected 260 of them at least once. During these past ten years of selecting hymns for worship, I have used 38% of the available hymns! I would be interested to know how this stacks up with other pastors because I really don’t know if this shows a decent amount of hymn diversity selection or if this is way too low of a percentage.
The second thing that jumped out at me is that even the hymns I chose the most were only used an average of three times per year or less!
Here are the top 10 hymns that I chose over these past ten years along with the number of times they were chosen.
#1 “Amazing Grace” (29 Times)
#2 “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (24 Times)
#3 “Spirit Song” (22 Times)
#4 to #5 (2-Way Tie) “How Great Thou Art” & “Here I Am Lord” (21 Times Each)
#6 “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” (20 Times)
#7 to #10 (4-Way Tie) “Joy to the World,” Blessed Assurance,” “Jesus Calls Us” & “How Firm a Foundation” (18 Times Each)
And congrats to “Amazing Grace” for being the most selected hymn as it probably deserves to be! 👏
So what do you think? Any surprises on this top 10 list?
I can’t only think of one. How did “Free Bird” not make the list??? 🤪
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