New Hymns - For Home and Church

[JAHS]

 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced on Thursday that it has added 15 hymns to its new hymnbook, “— Hymns For Home and Church."
I only recognize a couple of them.

The new hymns are as follows:

“Close As a Quiet Prayer”
“Come, Hear the Word the Lord Has Spoken”
“Faith in Every Footstep”
“Holy Places”
“I Can’t Count Them All”
“I Have Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ”
“I Know That My Savior Loves Me”
“Let Easter Anthems Ring”
“Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling”
“Standing on the Promises”
“Take My Heart and Let It Be Consecrated”
“This Little Light of Mine”
“To Love Like Thee”
“Welcome Home”
“Were You There?”

[Mystery Meat]

The first time "This Little Light of Mine" is sung in sacrament meeting, I am standing up and going into the foyer.

[JAHS]

7 hours ago, Mystery Meat said:

The first time "This Little Light of Mine" is sung in sacrament meeting, I am standing up and going into the foyer.

They will probably save that one for Primary. It's not in the Sacrament meeting Hymn book.

[Tacenda]

I hope that they include "Go Tell It On The Mountain" one day.

[Calm]

41 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I hope that they include "Go Tell It On The Mountain" one day.

For some reason my brain went to “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why in the world you would want that included.

[Nofear]

One of the things I've noticed with some of the new hymns (and it's probably a cognitive bias that skews my perception of reality) is that there are quite a few of the new songs that sound great but when attempted by an untrained population they sound horrible. Many of my favorite hymns from the current (/cough 1985) selection sound good with an unskilled group (most congregations).
 

 

[bluebell]

14 hours ago, JAHS said:

They will probably save that one for Primary. It's not in the Sacrament meeting Hymn book.

I thought they were moving to only have one hymn book with these songs?

[bluebell]

39 minutes ago, Nofear said:

One of the things I've noticed with some of the new hymns (and it's probably a cognitive bias that skews my perception of reality) is that there are quite a few of the new songs that sound great but when attempted by an untrained population they sound horrible. Many of my favorite hymns from the current (/cough 1985) selection sound good with an unskilled group (most congregations).
 

 

We sang “this is the Christ” last week and it was not good. 

[bluebell]

21 hours ago, Mystery Meat said:

The first time "This Little Light of Mine" is sung in sacrament meeting, I am standing up and going into the foyer.

Your light sounds a little hostile.

[Tacenda]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

For some reason my brain went to “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why in the world you would want that included.

I had a powerful spiritual moment when during the Christmas season my ward and stake invited a Baptist choir to join our wards/stake choirs for a Christmas concert. And the stake president even got up and told everyone that we would be fine to clap in the chapel, normally this isn't protocol. And he wanted to allow it to make it more welcoming to this Baptist choir. They were a well known choir, or still are as you probably know who I'm talking about. My mind currently drawing a blank, but I thought that was awesome. So first the leader of the Baptist choir I think, gave the opening prayer and during it, several in their choir would say amen out loud to what he was saying, which is probably normal. And then the choirs from the wards and the Baptist choir would take turns with different Christmas songs. And then "Go Tell It On The Mountain" came up and I watched as the stake president and bishops were up at the stand and standing and clapping and swaying and the audience did the same, and we never do that during our meetings. So here I was at the back of the cultural hall on the stage, because that was how full the building was, and it hit me big time, the spirit while singing to this song, everyone was singing along. 

At the end of the night when my family had a prayer before bed my youngest son was silly and during the prayer as someone else was giving it, my son would say "amen", we got a kick out of it afterwards. He wasn't disparaging at all, just doing what he saw was done during that prayer at the concert. He was old enough that he knew what he was doing. 

[manol]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

Your light sounds a little hostile.

Maybe he feels that the foyer could use the shining of a little light??

Seriously, I think wherever we go, we "shine the light" of whatever our consciousness is tuned-in to in the moment. 

Think of how many scriptures there are which advocate deliberately choosing to align our consciousness with something intangible but "of the light", such as:   "Be of good cheer" or "fear not" or "have faith" or "peace be with you" or "love one another" or "love God".  

Those are all ways that our little lights can shine, in my opinion, whether or not we are fans of the song. 

 

Edited February 15 by manol

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

I had a powerful spiritual moment when during the Christmas season my ward and stake invited a Baptist choir to join our wards/stake choirs for a Christmas concert. And the stake president even got up and told everyone that we would be fine to clap in the chapel, normally this isn't protocol. And he wanted to allow it to make it more welcoming to this Baptist choir. They were a well known choir, or still are as you probably know who I'm talking about. My mind currently drawing a blank, but I thought that was awesome. So first the leader of the Baptist choir I think, gave the opening prayer and during it, several in their choir would say amen out loud to what he was saying, which is probably normal. And then the choirs from the wards and the Baptist choir would take turns with different Christmas songs. And then "Go Tell It On The Mountain" came up and I watched as the stake president and bishops were up at the stand and standing and clapping and swaying and the audience did the same, and we never do that during our meetings. So here I was at the back of the cultural hall on the stage, because that was how full the building was, and it hit me big time, the spirit while singing to this song, everyone was singing along. 

At the end of the night when my family had a prayer before bed my youngest son was silly and during the prayer as someone else was giving it, my son would say "amen", we got a kick out of it afterwards. He wasn't disparaging at all, just doing what he saw was done during that prayer at the concert. He was old enough that he knew what he was doing. 

Was this experience a while ago or was it a recent Christmas?  It sounds like a wonderful meeting.

[JAHS]

4 hours ago, bluebell said:

I thought they were moving to only have one hymn book with these songs?

I think you are right. But I doubt that we will ever hear "This little light of mine" sung in Sacrament meeting.

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, JAHS said:

I think you are right. But I doubt that we will ever hear "This little light of mine" sung in Sacrament meeting.

Primary program maybe…

[Nofear]

This video gives some context/origin on the new hymns. Very brief.

 

[Amulek]

On 2/15/2025 at 10:18 AM, bluebell said:

I thought they were moving to only have one hymn book with these songs?

That's the plan.

The people in charge of selecting music for our sacrament meetings have begun incorporating selections from the newly released songs, and they have yet to show that they see any kind of distinction between 'primary' and 'sacrament meeting' songs.

Perhaps this is by design, but I find many primary songs to be rather distracting for a sacrament meeting service.

 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

That's the plan.

The people in charge of selecting music for our sacrament meetings have begun incorporating selections from the newly released songs, and they have yet to show that they see any kind of distinction between 'primary' and 'sacrament meeting' songs.

Perhaps this is by design, but I find many primary songs to be rather distracting for a sacrament meeting service.

 

I like some of them and others not as much. For me the distraction is when we don’t know the song at all and it’s a song that really needs conviction behind it to not sound stupid.

We sang This is the Christ a couple weeks ago and it was painfully bad. And it almost seems sacrilegious to murder a song like that in sacrament meeting. 

[Rain]

On 2/15/2025 at 9:20 AM, bluebell said:

Your light sounds a little hostile.

Or maybe he is afraid he will start dancing too wildly.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

We sang This is the Christ a couple weeks ago and it was painfully bad. And it almost seems sacrilegious to murder a song like that in sacrament meeting. 

I am surprised they aren’t instituting a church wide program to help get the songs familiar faster…as in sending out emails focusing on one new song every week and encouraging members to listen to it at least once every day and sing along with it even and then perform it that Sunday.  If I were a music leader, that is what I would propose to the bishop.

[bluebell]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am surprised they aren’t instituting a church wide program to help get the songs familiar faster…as in sending out emails focusing on one new song every week and encouraging members to listen to it at least once every day and sing along with it even and then perform it that Sunday.  If I were a music leader, that is what I would propose to the bishop.

That would be a great idea.  I doubt many members would actually do it.  I never remembered to have my kids listen to the music for the primary program when the leader would send home CDs of the songs or provide QR codes to it.  The best of intentions and all that.

[Calm]

22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That would be a great idea.  I doubt many members would actually do it.  I never remembered to have my kids listen to the music for the primary program when the leader would send home CDs of the songs or provide QR codes to it.  The best of intentions and all that.

I agree, but if enough did, it might lead to others enjoying the songs more, them getting more play (I think there may be a tendency in some wards once the Hymnbook is out to just stick with familiar songs) and all retain a stronger memory of them, thus speeding up the familiarizing phrase.

I think we have enough repetition in our lessons that we could also take a two year period or longer depending on how many they end up being once the Hymnbook is out to cover it in RS/PH time period like happened with the new Gospel Principles manual when it came out (the Presidents of the Church series was paused).  Lessons could be learning the song and having a what does this teach us section as well.  Either every other week or once a month.  Learning through music is an established teaching method.  We use it well in Primary, but seem to have forgotten it for adults since we moved to the combined 3 hour meeting, though there were attempts to include it by fitting it between….which only led to too short of times for all.  Teaching through music needs to be fully embraced as a focus and not be seen an aid or a framing of the substantive parts of our worship.

[bluebell]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

I agree, but if enough did, it might lead to others enjoying the songs more, them getting more play (I think there may be a tendency in some wards once the Hymnbook is out to just stick with familiar songs) and all retain a stronger memory of them, thus speeding up the familiarizing phrase.

I think we have enough repetition in our lessons that we could also take a two year period or longer depending on how many they end up being once the Hymnbook is out to cover it in RS/PH time period like happened with the new Gospel Principles manual when it came out (the Presidents of the Church series was paused).  Lessons could be learning the song and having a what does this teach us section as well.  Either every other week or once a month.  Learning through music is an established teaching method.  We use it well in Primary, but seem to have forgotten it for adults since we moved to the combined 3 hour meeting, though there were attempts to include it by fitting it between….which only led to too short of times for all.  Teaching through music needs to be fully embraced as a focus and not be seen an aid or a framing of the substantive parts of our worship.

I agree that would be a great way to do it.  I think it's more likely that the second coming happens before the church would implement something like that, sadly.  You are right in that music is a great teaching method, it's sad that so few people like to sing in group settings.

[Tacenda]

On 2/15/2025 at 8:39 AM, Nofear said:

One of the things I've noticed with some of the new hymns (and it's probably a cognitive bias that skews my perception of reality) is that there are quite a few of the new songs that sound great but when attempted by an untrained population they sound horrible. Many of my favorite hymns from the current (/cough 1985) selection sound good with an unskilled group (most congregations).
 

 

How did I miss this, so great. Isn't this the former America's Idol winner. Now forgot his name.