The Fifth Batch of New Hymns!

general
frequency
new hymns
Author

Joey Stanley

Published

September 18, 2025

Modified

January 5, 2026

On September 18, 2025, the church released the fifth batch of new hymns, which features another African American spiritual, a hymn written by a Tongan saint, and lyrics written by President Nelson. In previous posts, I have covered in detail the first, second, third, and fourth batches of hymns and how they were incorporated into sacrament meetings. This page covers period since when the fifth batch came out and will update weekly as more data comes in.

Currently I have data from 8,576 sacrament meetings from 1,160 wards since September 21, 2025. Here’s how much data I have for each week so far, just so you have an idea of what I’m working with.

Number of wards I have data from, by week
Since September 21, 2025
date wards
September 21 439
September 28 646
October 12 720
October 19 586
October 26 603
November 02 690
November 09 673
November 16 719
November 23 678
November 30 691
December 07 721
December 14 686
December 21 415
December 28 231
January 04 78

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.

The first two weeks of the fifth batch were pretty lukewarm. Very few wards sang from it. A few wards sang Our Prayer to Thee (#1048) on September 28, the day after President Nelson died, but otherwise, fifth-batch hymns were quite rare.

There is a noticeable jump after General Conference though. More wards sang from the fifth batch on October 12 (7.2%) than even the best week of the fourth batch (August 24th: 6.9%). The bulk of this surge (about 62%) was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Our Prayer to Thee (#1048). However, most of the hymns in the fifth batch have been attested at least once in my dataset.

Since General Conference and through Christmastime, the fifth batch has held pretty constant at around 5%–10% of wards each week. While other batches (notably the second and third) experience some slumps during Christmas time.

A noteworthy landmark is that October 26 was the day where the most number of wards sang at least one new hymn: about 55%. We’ve seen a handful of weeks were right around half of wards sang new hymns, but that day was quite a bit more than others. We hit came close to this again on November 30, presumably as many wards started to sing the new Christmas hymns.

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.

In this version of the plot, it’s easier to compare batches. Thanks to that post–General Conference surge, the fifth batch was nearly as popular as the third batch for one week. Since then, it seems to be about as popular as the fourth batch was around this time.

What hymns are most popular each week?

This plot shows how popular each hymn is each week. Out of all the fifth batch hymns sing in a given week, what percentage of them were Our Prayer to Thee (#1048), for example?

Since the data is still so sparse, it’s important to to put too much weight into the percentages. But it is clear that Our Prayer to Thee (#1048) is the lion’s share of fifth batch hymns, at least for the first few weeks. Something we’re seeing though is that two other hymns, Thou Gracious Lord, Whose Mercy Lends (#1042) and Help Us Remember (#1043) were more common after about a month of their release, with roughly a quarter to a third of wards that have sung fifth-batch hymns singing them. In the Christmas season, Go Tell It on the Mountain (#1208) saw a huge spike, as did Little Baby in a Manger (#1209).

When during meetings are these hymns sung?

We can also see when during sacrament meetings these hymns have been sung. Data sparsity makes this a pretty unreliable table though. We’ll have to wait a few more weeks or months to really see some more meaningful trends. The only one that is somewhat trustworthy is, you guessed it, Our Prayer to Thee (#1048).

When were new hymns sung in sacrament meeting?
Since September 21, 2025
New Hymn Opening Sacrament Intermediate Closing
Thou Gracious Lord, Whose Mercy Lends (1042)
40%
0%
29%
31%
Help Us Remember (1043)
2%
98%
0%
0%
How Did the Savior Minister? (1044)
41%
0%
18%
41%
Jesus Is the Way (1045)
40%
0%
20%
40%
Can You Count the Stars in Heaven? (1046)
83%
0%
0%
17%
He Cares for Me (1047)
71%
0%
0%
29%
Our Prayer to Thee (1048)
43%
8%
17%
32%
Joseph Prayed in Faith (1049)
0%
0%
50%
50%
Stand by Me (1050)
55%
0%
18%
27%
This Day Is a Good Day, Lord (1051)
54%
0%
14%
32%
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1208)
40%
0%
25%
34%
Little Baby in a Manger (1209)
51%
0%
24%
24%
Note: Each row adds up to 100%.

Conclusion

That’s all for now. We’re starting to see the fifth batch pick up in popularity a little bit, which is exciting. I expect we’ll see Christmas affect things quite a bit, and then I think we’re due for another batch soon.