from Worshiphymns arranger Don Chapman:
Whenever I look at my YouTube analytics, I search for “hymncharts” or “worshiphymns” to find my channels. That search also brings up plenty of videos other people have created using my arrangements.
Recently, one of them caught my attention.
It had more than 15 million views 😱
The video was posted by a woman who contacted me over ten years ago and asked whether she could use some of my arrangements on her YouTube channel. Naturally, I told her, “Sure!”
After seeing that number, I started clicking through some of the other videos. One million views here. Five million there.
How in the world have I missed all of this for so many years LOL!!??
When I totaled the views from those channels and added them to my own, the number came to a little over 43 million!
I’ve been arranging hymns for more than twenty years, but I had never stopped to add everything together. Suddenly, there it was:
43 MILLION views of my work.
My own Hymncharts YouTube channel has received nearly 4.9 million views across 75 videos. The most popular video is my arrangement of Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, with 543,754 views. Close behind is Christ Arose, with 457,289.
It’s interesting that two resurrection hymns are at the top of the list. Then again, when you think about it, the resurrection is the very heart of our faith!
So, what does a number like 43 million really mean?
It means people still love hymns!
We live in a worship culture that sometimes acts as though the only songs worth singing are the latest releases from the largest churches with the most impressive lighting.
And yet tens of millions of people have searched for old, public-domain hymns arranged by someone who is not remotely famous.
These songs were written 100, 150, even 200 years ago. There was no marketing campaign, influencer promotion, conference debut, or carefully planned rollout.
People looked for these hymns because they wanted to hear them.
Two centuries later, they still do!
Hymns offer something newer songs have not yet had time to develop: shared memory. Their melodies have been carried from one generation to the next. Their words give us dependable language for resurrection, suffering, hope, repentance, and praise.
Here are a few things those 43 million views have made me think about.
1. The people I will never meet
Every view represents a person.
Of course, some people probably watched more than once, so we’re not talking about 43 million individual faces. Still, that is an enormous number of people!
Some may listen to hymns because they remind them of another time. But hymns are more than nostalgia. They can become landmarks in a person’s faith and life.
“That was my grandmother’s favorite hymn.”
“We sang this one at our wedding.”
“This hymn was played at Dad’s funeral.”
A hymn can carry an entire lifetime inside its melody. Is it any wonder people return to them again and again?
Many viewers may also be worship leaders serving small churches with little or no production budget. They could be listening to one of my arrangements so they can learn it and lead it for their congregation that weekend.
Imagine that just one of those views belongs to a worship leader who later presents the arrangement to a church of 100 people. That single view has suddenly become 100 voices singing together on Sunday morning.
Multiply that by even a small percentage of 43 million, and the number of people who have actually SUNG these arrangements becomes impossible to calculate.
2. The Easter effect
Remember the two most-watched arrangements on my channel?
Christ the Lord Is Risen Today and Christ Arose.
At Easter, churches reach for the big hymns… the songs almost everyone recognizes. Every spring, the view counts on those arrangements rise like clockwork.
The same thing happens with my Christmas arrangements each December.
When the most important moments of the church calendar arrive, people return to the hymns.
3. The story behind one of the biggest arrangements
Christ Arose has become one of the genuine hits of my arranging career. Here’s how it came together.
Years ago, I was working at a megachurch when an extraordinarily talented vocalist joined our choir. She eventually went on to appear on The X Factor!
Everything came together in one of those “perfect storm” situations.
I worked and worked on the arrangement, trying to make the song fit naturally into a contemporary worship setting. Gospel hymns like Christ Arose can be especially difficult to modernize without losing what makes them special.
She turned out to be exactly the right vocalist for it, and the church happened to have one of the earliest professional video systems in the country.
We introduced the arrangement on Easter Sunday in 2009. You can watch that original service here:
[VIDEO LINK — Christ Arose, first Easter Sunday 2009]
At the time, I had no idea how far the arrangement would eventually travel.
All I knew was that it worked in church that morning!
Arranging tip: How Christ Arose came together
The chords you choose can make all the difference!
For me, arranging often feels like solving a puzzle. How can I create fresh, contemporary chord progressions while still honoring the original melody?
I experimented with Christ Arose for quite a while before finally landing on the progression you hear in the finished arrangement.
Then comes the feel. A hymn needs a strong groove, but it also needs one that suits the character of the song.
In Christ Arose, the verses gradually create tension. Then the chorus bursts open with an ascending chord pattern that helps communicate the excitement of the resurrection.
I also like to include what I call a “gotcha” moment in an arrangement… a surprising chord, an unexpected break, or some other detail that stays in the listener’s memory.
The “gotcha” in this arrangement comes during the final chorus. The singers perform “Up from the grave He arose” a cappella, with rhythmic punches that lead the band back into the groove.
4. Ten years later, and the views are still growing
The 15-million-view video that started this entire train of thought was Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.
Honestly, I’m a little baffled by that one.
It’s a wonderful hymn, but I probably would not place it among the twenty most familiar hymns alongside songs such as Blessed Assurance or Amazing Grace.
And yet the video has received 15.5 million views.
What makes that number even more remarkable is that it took ten full years to get there.
Do the math: 15,614,069 views over ten years works out to roughly 1.5 million views annually. That is an average of more than 4,000 views every day for an entire decade.
And the number is still rising!
That is one of the beautiful things about a strong hymn arrangement.
A trendy song may enjoy a huge moment and then disappear. By the following year, people may have already moved on.
A good hymn arrangement can continue reaching people year after year after year.
Evergreen beats trendy!
5. Why contemporary hymn arrangements connect with people
When I created most of these arrangements years ago, I was a young, dirt-poor, part-time church musician. I had no reason to believe anyone beyond my own ministry would ever hear them.
But I HAD to write them.
At the time, contemporary hymn arrangements simply were not available. The church where I served had a contemporary worship style, but people still wanted the hymns.
Actually, they did more than want them. They clamored for them… or, dare I say, demanded them!
And they are still asking for hymns today.
As it turns out, God had much larger plans for those arrangements than I ever did.
That is the lesson I’ve learned, and it is one I hope younger musicians will learn as well: find a genuine need. Do careful, faithful work. Then trust the Lord with how far it travels.
A heartfelt thank-you
To every vocalist, musician, video creator, worship leader, and church that has taken these arrangements farther than I could have carried them myself: thank you.
You took music created in my home studio and brought it into churches all over the world.
Bottom line: The hymns still work. And faithful work often travels much farther than you ever imagined.
