Faithlife Corporation released its 2021 Year-End Song and Sermon Report showing that Pat Barrett’s “Build My Life” has regained the number one spot as the most popular worship song, a title it also held in 2019.
Last year’s most popular worship song, Sinach’s “Way Maker,” dropped to the number two spot.
Data for Faithlife’s report was collected from more than 7,600 songs that were sung over 3 million times in approximately 750,000 worship services using Faithlife’s presentation software, Faithlife Proclaim.
The top ten songs have all been written within the last nine years, the youngest being Elevation Worship/Brandon Lake’s song “Graves Into Gardens,” which was new to 2021’s list.
Founded in 1992 and known for their popular Logos Bible Software, the Faithlife report’s oldest song in the top 20 is “How Great Thou Art,” which was written in 1949.
Rounding out the top ten were the songs “Great Are You Lord” (All Sons & Daughters – 2012), “Goodness of God” (Bethel Music/Jenn Johnson – 2018), “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)” (Matt Redman – 2011), “How Great Is Our God” (Chris Tomlin – 2004), “This Is Amazing Grace” (Phil Wickham – 2012), “What a Beautiful Name” (Hillsong Worship – 2016), “Grave Into Gardens” (Elevation Worship/Brandon Lake – 2019), and “In Christ Alone” (Stuart Townsend, Keith Getty – 2001).
RELATED: Matt Redman Turns Times Square Into a Worship Room With ‘10,000 Reasons’
Faithlife’s report also shared the most popular sermon topics and scriptures preached in 2021: God, Jesus, love, power, faith, and glory were most popular.
Sermons relating to the end times (Eschatology) and the resurrection grew the most in popularity during 2021. Other topics that showed and increase in the pulpit were grace, family and children, creation, philosophy, revival, cults, compromise, persecution, and hospitality.
“These topics demonstrate the internal and external tensions many churches are facing,” the report reads. “Torn between fear, hope, and simply surviving, preachers dedicated many of their sermons to helping their congregations understand how scripture applied to their struggles.”
RELATED: Twenty Years Later, ‘In Christ Alone’ Still Inspires Millions To Sing
Ephesians 3:14–21 was the most trending passage Faithlife mentioned and stated that the top ten most used scriptures in sermons all came from the New Testament. John 3:16 and Matthew 28:18-20 were the two most popular passages, while Isaiah 9:6 was the most popular Old Testament passage used.
The New Testament book of Matthew had the most sermons preached from it. The most popular Old Testament book was Psalms.
