Jeff Ehlers is a startup CFO and entrepreneur, having founded 4 companies. He lives in Meridian, Idaho with his wife and twin girls + 1 baby girl. Jeff also enjoys cheering on the San Francisco Giants and cycling. He’s served in a variety of church callings, including several bishoprics and is currently Young Men President. His first church calling ever was as a music conductor as a teenager.

Enter Jeff…

Having served twice in a Bishopric, I realized the challenge of ending sacrament meeting on time. Part of that is the selection of hymns. I created a tool to help inform you of hymn lengths.

This tool has 3 tabs:

  • Alphabetical
  • All. Sorted longest to shortest singing all verses plus the introduction. ·
  • Traditional. Sorted longest to shortest as sung traditionally, meaning only the verses in the bars, plus the introduction.

In addition to using this as a resource for sacrament meetings, there are many uses for this tool: Seminary, choosing a closing hymn in Relief Society if you always run over, or essentially any church meeting involving a hymn where time is an important consideration.

I recognize this tool’s useful life is short lived – a few years max until the new hymnbook is released by the Church. At that point I hope to update it. Until then, enjoy.

A note on methodology:

The times are taken from the official recordings on LDS.org, which include introductions as written and generally follow the tempo as written. To obtain the times for as traditionally sung, I used the same recordings but subtracted out the time for written text of verses not in the bars. If there are any errors, please let me know so we can improve this tool.

I calculated the average length as 2:52 seconds for All Verses and 2:44 as Traditionally sung. That is a good rule of thumb to keep in mind. It is in Google Sheets so you can access it anytime & anywhere.

Hymn Length Document

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