Faithlife reveals that the most popular songs and sermons in church this 2020 has the theme centered around hope and comfort, a report said.
According to The Christian Post, the makers of technology products Faithlife just released their "Year-End Song & Sermon Report" which revealed that the most common theme of the year 2020 is about comfort and hope. Co-founder and CEO of Faithlife Bob Pritchett confirms the result of the compiled data.
"Data was compiled from Faithlife Proclaim Church Presentation Software for worship songs and Faithlife Sermons for sermon topics, with comfort being a recurring them in songs selected," Pritchett shared.
Aside from comfort, peace and hope were also common topics among pastors. With 2020 being a difficult year, the data showed insight into the worship songs and sermon topics that churches hung on to at the height of the pandemic.
Of the list, the worship song "Way Maker" by Nigerian singer Sinach took the top spot as the most popular worship song in 2020. Patt Barrett's song "Build My Life" took second place and Matt Redman's "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" took the third spot.
The church presentation software, Faithlife Proclaim, gathered the data with over 7,000 songs sang about 2.2 million times in over 568,000 services.
"Way Maker" reached its highest popularity in the Proclaim software on the weekend of March 22 when the death toll in the United States rose due to COVID-19.
According to Pritchett, "The words of the top worship songs and most used topics of the sermons were speaking to the issues of the day in order to offer comfort among the chaos."
Other songs like "It Is Well With My Soul" and "'Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus" which are hymns and even newer songs like Matt Boswell's and Matt Papa's "His Mercy Is More" and Bethel Music's "Goodness of God" also made the list of the top worship songs. Hillsong Worship's "King of Kings" and Elevation Worship's "See A Victory" are also included in the list.
Of the sermons, Faithlife's data revealed that topics surrounding "loneliness, friendship, fear, contentment and leadership" had been common of the analyzed 200 different topics. The most common words uttered in a sermon include "God, Jesus, love, faith, power and glory."
Faithlife Sermons gathered data from the 60,000 sermons posted on the software.
As lockdowns continued due to the pandemic, topics of "fear, prayer, faith, suffering, comfort, grief and stress" were trending leading up to Easter.
When George Floyd died while in police custody and social unrest followed with summer riots, topics that deal with "government, justice, freedom, anger, and judgment" rose in popularity.
By September, the trending words and topics were "church fellowship, service, church leadership, work, and election." Of all the words combined, "peace and hope" are the words which had the highest sermon trend for the year and gained its peak of popularity in December.
This trend also correlates with what YouVersion, the popular Bible app, found. In 2020, words such as "peace," "faith" and "hope" were among the most-searched. Popular online Bible website BibleGateway.com also reveals that these are among the popular keywords in Bible verse searches, alongside "justice," "protection," and verses with political themes.
With the results of the Faithlife Software, it only shows that believers still find hope in the midst of the dark and seemingly hopeless times brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
