How can you improve your hymn sight-reading skills?

By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)

Yesterday my student Jay from San Diego, CA asked my help in improving his hymn sight-reading skills. He's 70 years old and occasionally plays as an substitute at church and especially enjoys hymn playing.

But right now he's struggling with reading 4 voices from the hymnal.

I gave him advice to practice 30 hymns for 30 days from the hymnal while only playing the soprano part. After that he should do the same with the next set of 30 hymns and the alto part. Then comes the tenor part and finally the bass.

4 steps with solo parts, then 6 steps with 2 part combinations, then 4 steps with 3 part combinations and after that he will be ready for the entire 4 part texture.

You see where I'm going with this? My 15 step sight-reading system.

Do you think this type of approach will lead him to success?