Spreadsheets for the Lord

Originally posted at www.fccleb.org on July 20, 2010

I felt like I was back in B-school rather than Divinity School when I was working on yesterday’s sermon. As part of a series of reflections on the über-productive hymn writer Isaac Watts (he penned more than 750, some of which remain very popular – Joy to the World, anyone?), I wanted to see which hymns appeared most frequently among seven different hymnals published between 1906 and 2007. The easiest way to do this was by using a spreadsheet. Memories of sensitivity analyses, crosstabs, and other ways of playing with data came rushing back. A lot’s been said and written about the ways the Internet can be used to spread the Gospel. But number crunching? Not so much.

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