The images included here come from the Church Newsroom.

 The hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don’t just reside on a page. They skip across our souls like stones on a still pond, leaving their mark with ripples everywhere. I can hear them somewhere in the ground of my being, pressing through my cells, and capturing my life for as long as I can remember. They swell with pioneer memory from the Tabernacle Choir, open my soul for the sacrament, whisper on my lips when I pray and are attached to my first remembered spiritual experience when I started to cry as a five-year old, because I thought of “his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt.”

These songs belong to us, mark us as a community, spill out of our hearts because they have been placed there so often and so much. For more than thirty years, my husband Scot and I have led tours with fellow Latter-day Saints where we discuss the gospel and sing together every day. No matter which group we have taken, when we sing, we naturally take parts, sing with cheer, and sound good—I mean really good. Invariably, the bus driver thinks we are a choir.

Singing well is what Latter-day Saints do. They did it to help themselves across the plains and we do it still.

That’s why the announcement of a new hymnbook, as was made in June 2018, isn’t just another project. It marks a new generation and a new era. I remember the black hymnbook, published in 1950 and its transition to the green one in 1985. If you love the green hymnbook and have memorized the hymn numbers, you might wonder why we would possibly need a new one?

It’s not just to finally include again “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, though that is a necessity. This hymn was in the 1950’s hymnbook and then unceremoniously dropped because it wasn’t popular enough. That, of course, has changed. No, the reason for a new hymnbook is to make it global, and to invite new writers to create new songs that might find their way into a new hymnbook and into our hearts.

This new global hymnbook has begun with the release of 13 new songs, which may be accessed digitally through the Sacred Music and Gospel Library apps in the online Church Music Library at music.churchofjesuschrist.org.

Small batches of new music will continue to be published digitally in preparation for the full hymnbook release, currently expected in print and digital formats by the end of 2026 in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The hymnbook is anticipated to be available in 50 languages by the end of 2030.

The hymns now available are:

 

Submitters’ Stories

Just as modern covenant Israel is made of the testimony of many voices, so is the new hymnbook. Latter-day Saints from around submitted hymns.

“It would have been a lot simpler to just have specific writers and specific composers contribute specific things,” said Anna Molgard, music project coordinator for the Church’s Priesthood and Family Department. “But in the Lord’s kingdom, He allows us to be a part of this great work, and so it was an opportunity for members of our faith to express their own testimonies in their own way and have an opportunity to perhaps share that with the world.”

Submitters were asked to submit their pieces without their name or any identifying information, so that their work could be evaluated on its own merits. Through an extensive review process, songs were prayerfully considered and chosen for this collection out of 17,000 submissions.

“It was 17,000 testimonies that we were able to look at and read and see people’s desire and their willingness to express their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in a very specific and unique way was so humbling,” Molgard said. “We were so grateful and humbled by the enormity of that offering.”

The seed of the hymn “As Bread Is Broken” came to creator Stephen Reynolds while sitting in a sacrament meeting in 2017.

“It’s a time where we take bread and water to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,” Reynolds said. “I was thinking about the significance of that and the need for that in my life. And as I thought about that, I had some ideas, some words, very simple words with a very simple tune, come to my mind.”

Reynolds hopes that his hymn will help members to focus more on their covenants and the enabling power they receive through that sacred bond.

“I know that the Church committee has had a lot of work to go through,” Reynolds said. “[They’ve reviewed] thousands and thousands of submissions very carefully. I’m gratified that they would do that because somebody like I am, that doesn’t have a name out there per say, I can still have my work considered.”

“It’s such an exciting day for all of us throughout the Church that we get to receive these wonderful offerings from faithful members of the Church who have shared their testimonies in such a specific way,” added Molgard. “Sacred music is such a gift from the Lord that it allows us to feel the spirit of the Lord in such a unique way.”

“We’ve taken such great care with these very sacred offerings that none of the process could be rushed, none of it could be pushed forward or moved forward any faster. And the Lord’s timing is always right. He allows us to be a part of His work in such beautiful ways that we get to see His hand in His work.”