Seven/Eleven Songs

I have heard a countless number of people refer to Praise and Worship songs as “Seven/Eleven” songs--“the same seven words sung eleven times” (ironically a seven-word statement). I thought it was witty the first time I heard it but, I've now heard it more than eleven times. The phrase tends to end conversations between members of a church who could be sharing spiritual journeys rather dismissing each other. So, I decided to do a little math.

The closest thing I could find to a list of the most frequently sung hymns was from a summary report concerning a Presbyterian Hymnal. I took the lyrics to these hymns and individually placed them in a text analysis tool that gave me the total number of words used, the total number of unique words (any word that's repeated was only counted one time), and several other statistics. I also calculated the ratio of words to unique words—the lower the ratio, the less often any single word was repeated. So, the higher the ratio of words to unique words, the lower the density. I did the same thing with CCLI Top 8 songs. I removed one of the CCLI top songs because it was a contemporary arrangement of Amazing Grace.

Below are my findings.

Hymn Name	Words	Unique Words	Hard Word	Ratio
Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound	99	72	2	1.38
Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow	25	19	1	1.32
Be Thou My Vision	134	71	3	1.89
Glory Be to the Father	31	22	1	1.41
Great Is Thy Faithfulness	123	83	6	1.48
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!	127	68	7	1.87
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee	185	116	3	1.59
Here I Am, Lord	167	67	0	2.49
Average Hymn	111.38	64.75	2.88	1.72
Mighty to Save	166	72	8	2.31
How Great is Our God	135	59	1	2.29
Blessed Be Your Name	214	67	5	3.19
Here I Am to Worship	242	72	4	3.36
Everlasting God	92	40	4	2.3
Your Grace Is Enough	173	54	2	3.2
Jesus Messiah	102	62	2	1.65
Holy is the Lord	119	41	3	2.9
Average Praise Song	155.38	58.38	3.63	2.66

You can see my work here:

As you can see, the hymns do have more unique words to total words—a lower ratio of unique words to total words. But the difference between 1.72 total words to 1 and 2.66 words to 1 unique word hardly warrants the claim of superiority. The average hymn used about 65 unique words while the average praise song used a little over 58 unique words--not that great a difference

Please understand that if I were forced to make a choice between singing only songs written before 1970—the year of my birth—or only songs written since 1970, I would choose to sing only songs written before I was born. I would do so sadly as there are many Christian contemporary songs that I treasure. Please also understand that I think the so-called worship wars of the 1980's and 1990's are not only done but completely irrelevant. Those who want to trumpet traditional hymns as essential to the preservation of the faith and those who want to trumpet contemporary praise music as essential for reaching today's audience have both missed the point. The church is called to praise and make disciples. God receives both traditional hymns and contemporary praise songs as expressions of praise and both are useful ways of fostering faithfulness. Either must be acquired by those coming into the church--we can't assume that either is inherently more useful for the church's mission. It's time to throw away the judgment line and start the conversation about what really matters—testifying to the capacity of diverse music and lyrics to aid our spiritual journeys.