In Spring 2026, Dr. Laura Carroll’s ENGL 325: Advanced Composition students were challenged to engage Special Collections broadly, and, more specifically, with the hymnal collection. Each student wrote a research paper on a topic inspired by the hymnal collection. Their research included databases, interviews, library print resources, and data collection. Today we welcome ACU student Brenna Barbarick to the blog. Read on to learn more about her research.

Abilene Christian University holds two worship services each week during chapel in Moody Coliseum. On Mondays, students join in a 10-minute instrumental worship session before the speaker for the week begins, and on Fridays, students participate in Praise Day, which lasts the entire 30-minute chapel period and can be with acapella or instrumental. As a freshman at ACU, I have to attend the majority of Moody chapel services in order to meet the requirements for chapel credit. I began to wonder what kind of an impact the songs we sing, and how we sing them, might be impacting myself and the rest of the students in attendance each week. After reading Carl Bear’s article covering the importance of a balanced congregational song repertoire, I realized that it was both possible and necessary to analyze ACU’s chapel repertoire. I contacted the Office of Spiritual Life, and they were able to provide me with a song usage report, which detailed which songs were planned for chapel and how many times each one has been used since January of 2025. Then, using suggestions from Bear’s essay, I analyzed a selection of the worship songs according to a rubric found in Constance Cherry’s book entitled The Music Architect: Blueprints for Engaging Worshipers in Song. I also repeatedly referenced Worship Seeking Understanding, a novel by John D. Witvliet, throughout the course of my research in order to deepen my understanding of the influence of worship on those within a congregation.

With the previously mentioned sources as my foundation, I was able to identify the existence of noteworthy gaps within ACU’s chapel repertoire. For example, all of the songs I examined were meant to be comforting to the worshiper. This result may not appear to call for a solution at first. However, when all the songs are meant to be comforting, there is no room left for songs that are going to unsettle the worshiper from their day-to-day routine and call them to a more challenging, but more rewarding, purpose. Additionally, I discovered that students are frequently singing songs that describe a Christian’s response to the Lord’s character and the work He has done in their life. These kinds of songs are beneficial to the singer, but in the context of ACU’s chapel repertoire, they were out of balance with songs that tell the stories of the bible and reveal God’s character through scripture. The next possible steps of this research would be to reach out to others with experience in song analysis to instill even more confidence in my results. Then, I will be able to communicate with the Office of Spiritual Life about ways to create changes that would benefit the students of ACU.

Thank you, Brenna, for sharing your research with us. We’ll be back soon to highlight more student research inspired by our hymnal holdings.