There is no surviving evidence to suggest that Stainer aspired to leave Oxford. By 1871 Bulley had seen to it that he was on a salary of £200. This sum, however, was not considerable, and with a wife and five children to provide for (and another expected – Elizabeth Stainer was pregnant with a sixth child in January 1872), it seems likely that Stainer was looking for a higher-paying job. Nevertheless, Oxford was an amicable, comfortable and intellectually stimulating environment which he did not consider giving up unless a new and more rewarding opportunity presented itself.

In 1871 Stainer was invited to join the Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, W. H. Monk, Sir Henry Baker and the Rev. G. W. Huntingford on the committee of the revised Hymns Ancient & Modern. During August of that year Stainer went up to Monkland near Leominster to spend time with his colleagues, painstakingly going through the tunes of the hymnal to see what should be jettisoned and what should be retained. ‘No greater privilege have I ever had’, Stainer later recalled, of participating on that committee, and with the encouragement and enthusiasm of Dykes and Monk for the hymn genre he declared: ‘I plunged deeply into the fascinating study of hymnody, and have lost no opportunity of employing myself as a humble labourer in a sphere congenial and dear to me from the time of my childhood.’ The matter of hymn tunes and hymn texts instigated some correspondence between Stainer and Liddon in September 1871 as is evidenced by the following letter from Stainer:

The same letter also divulged the fact that a letter from Liddon had also raised the matter of music at St Paul's and that major reform was anticipated.