| Number of wards I have data from, by week | |
|---|---|
| Since September 21, 2025 | |
| date | wards |
| September 21 | 435 |
| September 28 | 540 |
| October 12 | 494 |
The Fifth Batch of New Hymns!
general
frequency
new hymns
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 1,469 sacrament meetings from 813 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.
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. There’s not a lot to see quite yet because it’s only been a few weeks, but we an already see some cool trends.
The first two weeks of the fifth batch were pretty lukewarm. Very few wards sang from it. A few wards sang
There is a noticeable jump after General Conference though. More wards sang from the fifth batch on October 12 (7.5%) than even the best week of the fourth batch (August 24th: 6.9%). The bulk of this surge (about 62%) was, perhaps unsurprisingly,
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 clearer that the fifth batch is doing better than the fourth batch in all weeks so far. It’s not quite as good as the third batch though (and certainly not the second or first).
What hymns are most popular?
The following table shows the hymns from the fifth batch in order of how popular they are.
| Approximate percentage of wards new hymns have been sung in | |
|---|---|
| Since June 15, 2025 | |
| Hymn | percent of wards |
| Our Prayer to Thee (1048) | 6.2% |
| Help Us Remember (1043) | 1.0% |
| Thou Gracious Lord, Whose Mercy Lends (1042) | 0.8% |
| Jesus Is the Way (1045) | 0.6% |
| This Day Is a Good Day, Lord (1051) | 0.6% |
| How Did the Savior Minister? (1044) | 0.2% |
| He Cares for Me (1047) | 0.2% |
| Stand by Me (1050) | 0.2% |
| Can You Sount th Stars in Heaven? (1046) | 0% |
| Joseph Prayed in Faith (1049) | 0% |
| Go Tell Is on the Mountain (1208) | 0% |
| Little Baby in a Manger (1209) | 0% |
It’s hard to say whether
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,
| 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) |
25%
|
0%
|
50%
|
25%
|
| Help Us Remember (1043) |
0%
|
100%
|
0%
|
0%
|
| How Did the Savior Minister? (1044) |
0%
|
0%
|
100%
|
0%
|
| Jesus Is the Way (1045) |
0%
|
0%
|
67%
|
33%
|
| He Cares for Me (1047) |
100%
|
0%
|
0%
|
0%
|
| Our Prayer to Thee (1048) |
39%
|
10%
|
16%
|
35%
|
| Stand by Me (1050) |
0%
|
0%
|
0%
|
100%
|
| This Day Is a Good Day, Lord (1051) |
100%
|
0%
|
0%
|
0%
|
| Note: Each row adds up to 100%. | ||||
Conclusion
That’s all for now. It’s too soon to say anything else because so few wards have sung from the fifth batch. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next few weeks though.