The Fourth Batch of New Hymns!

general
frequency
new hymns
Author

Joey Stanley

Published

June 15, 2025

Modified

September 21, 2025

On June 12th, 2025, the church released the fourth batch of new hymns. In previous posts, I have covered in detail the first, second, and third batches of hymns and how they were incorporated into sacrament meetings. This page covers period since when the fourth batch came out through September 13th, the week before the fifth batch came out.

Currently I have data from 7,830 sacrament meetings from 1,092 wards since June 15, 2025. Here’s how much data I have for each week during this period, just so you have an idea of what I’m working with.

Number of wards I have data from, by week
Since June 15th, 2025
date wards
June 15 607
June 22 529
June 29 455
July 06 731
July 13 766
July 20 691
July 27 661
August 03 736
August 10 539
August 17 431
August 24 597
August 31 652
September 07 435

How many wards sang new hymns each week?

The following plot show what percentage of wards sang from each of the new batches of hymns, per week, since June 2024 when the new hymns started getting rolled out. I’ve included data from all batches just so you can compare them to each other.

During this period, the fourth batch was never very popular. August 24th was the best week with 6.7% of wards singing from it. There was a little bit of jumping around with the second batch, but the general trend is that the first batch was the most common, then the second, then the third, then the fourth.

Interestingly, we are now to the point where about half of wards on a given Sunday sing at least one new hymn. We saw that for the first time on May 24th due to a spike in the third batch that day. (No one hymn was responsible for that spike, so I think it was just a fluke.) But, for three weeks in a row in August, we saw more than half of wards singing new hymns. I think thit is an important milestone and shows just how much these new hymns are being used in church.

Here’s another version of the same plot but instead of the actual dates, it’s in terms of how many weeks since the batches came out. This version of the plot is useful to spot any parallel trends across the batches, especially in the first few weeks of their release.

Here we can see that each batch is a little less popular than the previous one, both overall and week by week. Nearly 20% of wards sang from the first batch the week it came out. About 8% did for the second batch. About 1% for the third batch. And of the 607 wards I have data from on June 15th, just one of them sang from the fourth batch. Granted, it was Father’s Day, after several weeks, still very few wards had given the hymns in this new batch a try.

Multiple new hymns

So, rather than splitting up the data by batch, let’s look at just how many new hymns wards sing each week. In this plot, I show the percentage of wards that sing zero, one, or at least two hymns per week.

The gray line here is the same as what was shown in the previous plot since it shows the proportion of wards singing zero new hymns per week. But when we collapse all batches together, we see a pretty good trend where more and more wards are singing one new hymn per week. It ebbed and flowed, and especially in the May–July era there were dips as we hit various holidays. But, I wonder if we’ll see this continue going forward.

What I notice too is that there seem to be increases in the number of wards singing new hymns a few weeks after the the release of a new hymn. This is most apparent after the second batch came out. During that time, we also see slightly more wards singing two or more new hymns each week. A few weeks after the third batch came out, there is another rise. And even maybe a month or so after the fourtch batch came out there was a slight increase, to the point where we hit that threshold of more wards singing new hymns than wards not singing new hymns.

I want to zoom in briefly on the number singing two or more. The following plot shows the line labeled “2+” in the above plot, but broken down further into 2, 3, and 4 or more. Notice that this plot only goes up to about 6% in the y-axis, so we’re really zoomed into the bottom portion of the previous plot.

The biggest thing that I notice here is that the number of wards singing two new hymns really peaked in the three months after the second batch came out. I think people were pretty excited about another batch, and rather than singing the second batch instead of the first batch, they were adding it to their programs. At its peak, 5% of wards sang two new hymns. There was another brief period in May where we saw the same thing, but I’m not sure why that is.

When we look at wards singing three or four new hymns, it’s never been particularly common. Other than probably a fluke in early November, no more than 1% of wards have sung three new hymns. And I’ve never seen more than two wards in a week sing four new ones, and never since the fourth batch came out.

What hymns are most popular each week?

It’s been long enough that we can get an idea of which hymns were popular when. The following plot shows the percentage of wards that sang each hymn of the wards that sang any fourth batch hymns.

First, it’s important to remember that hardly anyone sang from this batch during the first few weeks. So, the huge spike in Because (#1039) and I’m Gonnna Live So God Can Use Me (#1037) are mostly due to data sparsity issues. However, one true pattern was the big spike that I’m a Pioneer Too (#1034) experienced at the end of July, which is the Sunday before Pioneer Day here in Utah. On July 20th, half of wards that sang from the fourth batch sang that hymn that day. Other than those, I don’t really notice any other patterns for any of the hymns.

When during meetings are these hymns sung?

We can also see when during sacrament meetings these hymns have been sung. I include this table for every batch, but it’s tricky to get much meaningful information from it because every hymn has its own story. For reasons that are not always clear, some hymns just tend to be opening hymns, others tend to be closing, and others show some other perhaps more complicated pattern.

When were new hymns sung in sacrament meeting?
Since June 15, 2025
New Hymn Opening Sacrament Intermediate Closing
Look unto Christ (1032)
26%
2%
45%
26%
Oh, How Great Is Our Joy (1033)
39%
0%
39%
23%
I'm a Pioneer Too (1034)
24%
0%
57%
19%
As I Keep the Sabbath Day (1035)
46%
8%
15%
31%
Read the Book of Mormon and Pray (1036)
25%
0%
62%
12%
I'm Gonna Live So God Can Use Me (1037)
24%
0%
38%
38%
The Lord's My Shepherd (1038)
35%
0%
10%
55%
Because (1039)
21%
0%
41%
38%
His Voice as the Sound (1040)
25%
0%
50%
25%
O Lord, Who Gave Thy Life for Me (1041)
14%
65%
8%
12%
Note: Each row adds up to 100%.

It makes sense that hymn>O Lord, Who Gave Thy Life for Me (#1041) is most commonly sung as a sacrament hymn because it is tagged as such. But, As I Keep the Sabbath Day (#1035) and Look unto Christ (#1032) were both occasionally sung as sacrament hymns.

The next clearest trend is that Read the Book of Mormon and Pray (#1036) seems to be most common as an intermediate hymn. The one most commonly sung as an opening hymn from this batch was As I Keep the Sabbath Day (#1035) and the one most commonly sung as a closing hymn was The Lord’s My Shepherd (#1038).

Conclusion

So, that’s it for the fourth batch of new hymns. The general pattern I see is that this batch has been less popular. It is true that it’s smaller than the third batch, but it is still bigger than the second batch, so we can’t blame numbers alone. We’ve also had some holidays here and there, like Father’s Day, 4th of July, and Pioneer Day, so those likely take precedent. It may also just be that the novelty of new hymns has worn off, although it’s important to note that almost half of wards are singing at least one new hymn each week. So maybe it’s that we’re still getting used to the hymns in the first batches before moving on to this latest one.