What does worship in WELS look like these days? How would a person know? Some churches livestream everything and post clips later, while others invite you to attend in person in order to participate.

During 2025, the Commission on Worship polled all WELS congregations with ten simple questions about their worship practices. Over 1,100 (out of 1,241) congregations looked at the survey, and almost 970 of them filled it out. We will spend the rest of 2026 revealing the answers to the survey and commenting on them.

Question number 1 was:

Which hymnal do you have in your pews?

Here are the answers.

Only CW21 (blue) in pews – 640 (66%)
Use CW21 electronic resources but no book in in pews – 61 (6%)
Both CW21 (blue) and CW93 (red) in pews – 51 (5%)
Only CW93 (red) in pews but use CW21 electronic resources – 29 (3%)
Only CW93 (red) in pews – 182 (19%)
CW93 and TLH in pews – 6 (1%)

Ten congregations mentioned that they also have the Christian Worship: Supplement (2008) in their pews. Some congregations reported using hymnals in Spanish, Chinese, or Apache. One reported using the LCMS hymnal.

One of the most common questions we get at the Commission on Worship is about the adoption rate of the new hymnal. From this survey, validated by NPH sales data, we can say that approximately 80% of WELS congregations report using CW21 resources. The other roughly 20% report using only CW93 resources.

There was the question of how many congregations would use CW21 electronic resources but not purchase the book. It appears to be 6-9%. The pastor of one of the congregations in this category wrote recently, “We still use CW93 here, with Service Builder as a way to use CW21, kind of like we did with the 2008 Supplement. Our congregation adopted this arrangement around the time CW21 came out. I asked our elders this year to look at CW21 again since we’ve been doing this for about five years.”

Pity the WELS congregations in Alaska. They mostly report using CW21 electronic resources but having CW93 in their pews because they cannot afford the shipping cost of the new hymnals.

Ten congregations reported having CW93, not CW21, in the pews, but not using CW93 resources very often, since there are not many settings of CW93 hymns and liturgy suitable for the liturgical ensembles in those congregations. Since there are settings from CW21 that are arranged for liturgical ensembles, those congregations are able to make use of some of the new resources without having CW21 in the pews.

There are only six churches who have more than 100 people in worship on an average Sunday and report using only CW93 resources. The largest one wrote, “We were unable to use the new hymnal because we use HymnSoft with a module that plays our pipe organ. The new hymnal resources did not offer this so we remained with CW93.”

This is a common reason cited for not purchasing CW21 resources. Smaller congregations without any musicians figured out how to use HymnSoft with CW93, but they did not think they had the resources to figure out how to use Playlist with CW21. The average number of people in worship on a Sunday in congregations who use only CW93 is 39. There are some geographic pockets of congregations who have not made the switch from CW93 to CW21, but it seems to have more to do with church size than geography.

The 51 congregations with both CW93 and CW21 in the pews have some unique dynamics. One of them reported that they could not figure out how to use the psalter resources with CW21, so they left CW93 in the pews to use it to sing the familiar psalm settings. Another reported that they had one regular organist who did not think she could learn anything new in CW21, so they left CW93 in the pews for use on the Sundays that she plays. One pastor reported that his organists were a little dismayed at first by the size of the accompaniment resources for CW21, but only recently figured out that the notes were easier to see and that many of the accompaniments for hymns in both CW93 and CW21 were simpler in CW21.

All six of the congregations who reported having TLH in their pews also reported having CW93 there.

Next month’s question: Do you usually use Service Builder to plan worship?