Sixteen award-winning Christian recording artists have collaborated to celebrate 75 years of the hymn ‘How Great Thou Art.’

To mark the milestone year, Chris Tomlin, Hillary Scott, Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, Matt Redman, Naomi Raine, Blessing Offor, Jon Reddick, TAYA, Brian and Jenn Johnson, Matt Maher, Pat Barrett, Benjamin William Hastings, Ryan Ellis, and Mitch Wong, came together to create a new recording of the song.

‘How Great Thou Art’ had its beginning in 1885 in southern Sweden, according to Lindsay Terry, Ph.D., author of Then Sings My Soul: 52 of the Greatest Song Stories Ever Told. A chapter from her book was excerpted in a June 2016 article. 

Songwriter and poet Carl Boberg recounts having been to an afternoon worship service with friends in nearby Kronobäck. 

“As we were returning a thunderstorm began to appear on the horizon,” Boberg recounted. “We hurried to shelter. There were loud claps of thunder, and the lighting flashed across the sky. Strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain.”

He continued: “The storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared with a beautiful rainbow. After reaching my home, I opened my window toward the sea. The church bells were playing the tune of a hymn. That same evening I wrote a poem which I titled, ‘O Store Gud,’ (How Great Thou Art).”

The poem was set to a Swedish folk tune. It was translated into German, and later into Russian. 

In the 1930s, Stuart K. Hine left his homeland of England and traveled on a mission to Poland, where he heard the Russian version of the “O Store Gud.” Hine, who traveled eastern Europe by bicycle as a missionary, wrote the English lyrics to “How Great Thou Art” in 1949 and made his own arrangement of the melody. 

To continue his mission, proceeds from the new version of the hymn will go to the Stuart Hine Trust to help bring humanitarian relief to eastern Europe.

For the 75th anniversary of the song, the Trust commissioned Matt Redman and Mitch Wong to write a new verse for the iconic hymn. 

“In the lyrics, we wanted to acknowledge the ‘broken, warring world’ we live in, but also to sing with hope and faith over that,” Matt Redman explains. “Worship isn’t meant to have an escapist mentality, where we ignore what’s going on around us in this fragile, fallen world. Instead, we can engage with these things, pray for, and acknowledge God’s ultimate kingdom rule and reign in the midst of them.”

Josh Shepherd contributed to this article, a version of which originally appeared at CHVN. 

Journalist Colleen Houde is a news writer and on-air host at CHVN in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.