The Church anticipates releasing up to 500 songs as part of a single “Hymns — for Home and Church” volume that will include music for all ages in one location. The goal is to have all songs released in up to 50 languages by 2030.

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” returns to the hymnbook in English after it was excluded from the 1985 hymnal. The hymn had remained in some language editions of the hymn book, however. President Porter said it was the most-requested song when Church members were asked to share which songs they want added to the new collection.


“We have seen miracles in this project — it is a miracle. We have gotten help where it’s just so wonderful that the help came at a point that we need that at most,” Elder Morrison said.

Since the beginning of this project, Church leaders have said the process has been guided by five principles:

Increase faith in and worship of Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.
Teach the core doctrine of the gospel with power and clarity.
Invite joyful singing at home and at church.
Comfort the weary and inspire members to endure in faith.
Unify members throughout the Church.
When the Church announced this project in June 2018, leaders invited members to submit original songs to be considered for inclusion. Individuals responded by submitting more than 17,000 songs that were considered and reviewed by multiple volunteers who have helped the hymnbook committee narrow down the final list.

“There ended up being more than 160 members who participated in helping us review the new submissions, and it took a long time — a couple of years — to review all of those submissions and we’re still reviewing them and making decisions,” Hirst said.

In 1985, when the current version of the hymnbook was published, the Church was nearing six million members worldwide. Today there are more than 17 million members of the Church.

“The growth of the Church is just incredible, worldwide.” Elder Morrison said. “The last time we had a review, like this was in 1985, that is almost 40 years ago. This revision is just so needed and essential as a way of unifying all members worldwide.”

As the Church has grown, and as the hymns of the Church have become available in more and more languages, unity in singing sacred hymns has posed a challenge because not all hymns are available in all languages, and those that are have different hymn numbers in each language’s hymnbook.

President Porter recalled visiting a branch in Galilee with her husband, the late Elder Bruce D. Porter, a General Authority Seventy, where the hymns were sung simultaneously in four languages — English, Hebrew, Russian and German.

“Now, with this global handbook, every member of the Church will have the same hymnbook with the same hymn numbers,” she said. “It will be so unifying for all of us.”

Digital release features
In the middle of the project, the staff, committee, and volunteers had to figure out how to continue working through an unprecedented pandemic. For Krenicky, he said he saw the Lord’s hand guiding them as they navigated the unpredictable nature of that time period.

“It’s a testimony of the Lord’s work through the pandemic,” he said.

The digital release of these first 13 hymns provides an opportunity for Church members and friends of the Church to learn some of the new or recently added functionality on the Church’s music website and on the Sacred Music app.

“If you don’t have the Sacred Music app, I highly recommend that you add that to your phone because that has a richer music experience than just the Gospel Library does,” Hirst said.

For example, the Sacred Music app allows users to listen to curated playlists and create playlists of their own. Curated playlists include the annual youth albums, simplified hymns and songs, instrumental music, music from Church events and Christmas music, among others.

Within the app, music can also be searched by topic and downloaded directly to a mobile device to listen to when streaming isn’t an option.

The new hymns are included in a section titled “Hymns — for Home and Church” and mirrors the title of the eventual print version of new songs. Within that playlist are currently two sections of music — “Sabbath and Weekday” with nine songs and “Easter and Christmas” with four songs. The numbering for the first section starts at 1001. The second starts at 1201. This allows the current hymnbook to retain its numbering in all languages for the time being.