Executive Committee Reviews Cut Hymns Feedback

From July of 2017 through March of 2018, the WELS Hymnal Project published nine segments of our current body of hymns, indicating which of those hymns were initially designated to be cut from inclusion in our next hymnal. As we did, we invited feedback from WELS members. Anyone interested could cast their vote for up to ten hymns from each segment, indicating that they would prefer to see those hymns kept. Among the nine different segments of the list, more than 8,000 responses were received. The window for submitting feedback closed on May 1.

At its meeting last week, the Hymnal Project’s Executive Committee discussed the results of that feedback. The Executive Committee decided to take the twenty hymns that the most people wanted to see included and put them back into consideration for the final list.

Those twenty hymns are:

• 13 There's a Voice in the Wilderness Crying
• 106 Come to Calvary's Holy Mountain
• 112 There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood
• 129 Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed
• 158 I Am Content! My Jesus Lives Again
• 213 Forever with the Lord
• 242 Oh, that I Had a Thousand Voices
• 260 Let All Things Now Living
• 284 How Precious Is the Book Divine
• 295 Dearest Jesus, We Are Here
• 322 On What Has Now Been Sown
• 345 In the Cross of Christ I Glory
• 347 Jesus! and Shall It Ever Be
• 368 O Savior, Precious Savior
• 433 Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me
• 473 Savior, I Follow On
• 488 Savior, Thy Dying Love
• 505 Love Is the Gracious Gift
• 566 We All Are One in Mission
• 571 From Greenland's Icy Mountains

In addition to putting these twenty back into consideration, the feedback we received will be beneficial as we do our final work on the list and things like balance across the various sections of the hymnal comes into play.

We are extremely grateful for the time and effort people took to provide us with feedback.