Study Guide

How to Study Hymns

A practical guide for preparing and leading a hymn study, helping you dig deeper into biblical truths.

Here’s a PDF of our Hymn Study Training handout!

How to Prepare a Hymn Study

The structure of a hymn study is straightforward:

  1. Introduce the studied hymn
  2. Read the hymn & Pray
  3. 1st discussion question
  4. Re-read the hymn
  5. Restate 1st discussion question & Discussion
  6. 2nd discussion question & Discussion
  7. “Any other thoughts?” & Summary
  8. Sing the studied hymn
  9. Introduce and sing the complementary hymn
  10. Pray

The preparation for a hymn study takes much work and practice. This article will explain the 3 essential aspects of hymn study preparation.

A. Examine the Words of the Hymn

Always start by reading the text of the hymn multiple times, slowly, deliberately reminding yourself that these are words that you will sing before the holy God. Familiarize yourself with the words apart from music and take time to understand what the words are saying. As you do so, ask 2 questions:

  1. Do these words honor God with truth? Are they theologically sound? Sometimes hymn texts can be wrong or unclear and should be modified.
  2. How can I read these words from my heart? Notice that this is first a personal question—how can you sincerely mean the words that you are reading? Only after you have felt the true weight of the words can you then communicate that with others.

Then make observations about and mark up the text. There are 3 angles from which you can think about the text of hymns:

  1. Hymns are poetry. The simplest ways to analyze hymns as poetry are to look for repetition and images: What ideas and words are repeated? What images are used? Are there any themes or patterns?
  2. Hymns were written, i.e., someone at some point sat down to write a new hymn—this hymn—out of an overflow of his or her heart to God. So ask: What kind of heart produced this hymn? Why write things in this particular way?
  3. Hymns are scriptural. Identify and find any scriptural allusions or scriptural ideas. (Discussed in more detail later in this article)

If it is available, consider the history of the hymn. This can mean exploring the backstory of the hymn or finding stories (personal or otherwise) of how the hymn has impacted fellow believers in the past. It can often be extremely helpful to attach a hymn to a specific time, place, and person. After all, it was and has been fellow sinners saved by grace through faith in Christ who wrote and sang these hymns before us.

Next, after grasping the main point of the hymn, pick ONE aspect of the hymn to focus on. It is neither possible to communicate everything there is to say about a given hymn in 30 minutes nor helpful to confuse people via information overload. Thus it is necessary to pick ONE focus for your hymn study. This focus should decide which details of the hymn to include (or exclude), which Scripture passage(s) to examine, and which questions to ask in your hymn study. Thus, if there is a certain Scripture passage or detail of the hymn you want to include, pick a focus that aligns with that. The main point of a hymn can be quite simple. Don’t be fooled into assuming that simple means insignificant or not-worth-studying. What does it mean very specifically? How does this play out in our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts, our actions, our interactions?

B. Study the Parallel Scripture Passages

After deciding on the ONE focus of the hymn study, select 1 longer or 2 shorter Scripture passages to study in connection to the hymn. In general, select passages that more closely align with the focus and passages that are shorter and clearer. It may also be helpful to select passages that expand on the hymn or fill in gaps in the hymn.

In preparation, study each individual passage, answering 3 questions:

  1. What does this passage say in context? This question is the most fundamental and will also likely take the most time and effort.
  2. In what way does this passage relate to us? The Bible is not written to us, but it is written for us.
  3. In light of the above, what are the practical implications of the passage for us? Consider how the passage ought to transform our mindsets, hearts, actions, and interactions.

Notice that these questions have nothing to do with the hymn but rather focus on the Scripture passage in its own right. Even though much of this information may not end up being discussed in the hymn study, you must have a firm grasp of a passage to use it at all. Scripture is the word of God and hence should be studied with care, not wrenched out of context.

Connect the passage(s) to the hymn by clearly connecting SPECIFICS of the Scripture passage to SPECIFICS of the hymn text in accordance with the focus of the hymn study. Simply pointing out that the Scripture passage and the hymn have the same ideas or themes is too vague. Take it a step further: Do the two share any words or phrases, and, if so, do they use the words or phrases in the same way? If the Scripture passage expands on or fills in gaps in the hymn, how specifically does it do so (e.g., doctrine-application emphasis, micro-macro view, individual-corporate perspective)? As you consider this, beware of 2 pitfalls:

  1. Not studying Scripture. Hymns only have value insofar as they truthfully and joyfully respond to God as He reveals Himself in Scripture. Hymn studies ultimately are not for studying man’s words or figuring out what man thinks of God but for joining fellow Christians in responding to the word of God.
  2. Failing to clearly and specifically connect the Scripture passage to the hymn, intentionally or not. If the connection is not explicitly shown, it is easy to miss the connection; and if the connection is missed, then the Scripture passage will not help us sing the hymn from the heart.

C. Distill All This into 2 Good Discussion Questions

The 1st discussion question is typically a simple observation question that directs people back to the hymn text so that they can familiarize themselves with it. A good way to think of this question is to consider what details of the hymn would point toward the focus of your hymn study. Building off the answers to the 1st discussion question, the 2nd discussion question asks people to make connections—between various aspects of the hymn, between the hymn and the Scripture passage, between the focus of the hymn study and life in general—and ultimately considers the WHY of the hymn and how to apply it to our lives.

Good discussion questions are open-ended (hint: they’re discussion questions), which means that there is a wide range of good answers. For observation questions, this often takes the form of, “What are some instances of …?” For conceptual questions, this can look like a general application question.

Some tips for leading discussions:

  1. Prepare a few rephrasings or sub-questions for each question in case the question falls flat.
  2. View yourself more as a participant of the discussion, not the moderator.
  3. Plan your questions so that both can be meaningfully discussed within the allotted time.