Facebook users nationwide recently responded to an informal survey by the Methodist Church to determine church goers favorite hymns in the United Methodist Hymnal. The results of the survey were quite consistent with a much larger, and more statistically valid, survey of 21,000 Methodists carried out in 2008. Number one on the list was NOT “Amazing Grace” which consistently turns up first, by a wide margin, when American Christians of all denominations are polled. So what hymns do current day Methodists prefer? Turns out, not the “traditional standards” you would expect as fully 40% of the Top Twenty were written in the last fifty years. Logging in at number one is a hymn written in 1981 by song writer Dan Schutte as a Catholic liturgical piece drawn from passages in Isiah and 1 Samuel and celebrating the conclusion of Vatican Council II. We know it as “Here I Am, Lord” but it’s found in hymnals of other demoninations as “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky”. The runner-up among Methodists is “How Great Thou Art” a poem by a Swedish author set to the melody of a Swedish folk song in 1885. At number three was “Amazing Grace” penned by English poet and clergyman John Newton in 1779. The rest of the top ten, in descending order: “Hymn of Promise”, “In the Garden”, “Lord of the Dance”, “It is Well With My Soul”, “Be Thou My Vision”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and “Blessed Assurance”. Jon Kroepel evidently has a Facebook account or keeps in close touch with the preferences of Methodists as nearly all of the top twenty hymns regularly are sung at First Methodist in Cheraw.