Best christian hymns books according to redditors

Disapproving Rabbits? I have the book, but the website listed on the book isn't coming up anymore disapprovingrabbits.com

I'm not sure The Real Book is what you're looking for, since you've asked about hymns. TRB might be a bit complicated, with its emphasis on songs that feature extended and more robust harmony. This is the right track, though. A "fake book" of any variety is definitely going to help- perhaps The Hymn Fake Book.

It's sort of a combination of simple note reading, experimentation, and adaption to the instrument. Process:

1. The key is key. Figure out the key. With the sheet music in front of you this is really a matter of reading the staff notation and then figuring out whether your piece is major or minor (C and Am have the same key signature, G and Em have the same key signature, etc.). You can usually figure this out by listening to the last measure of the piece for its flavor, major or minor (usually).
   
   
2. In each measure, read the notes in each voice and write them down. The notes will tell you which chords are likely.
   
   
3. Now a little guesswork. You need to figure out which chord is appropriate to each measure. Usually this involves knowing a bit about chord progressions and phrasing (generally simple in hymns). If you can sing the melody, guess the chords and sing while playing them. Let your ear be the guide; if it sounds right, you are good to go. Also, it is not necessarily the case that only one chord will work with a given measure (if this was a functional relationship, someone would have written a computer program to deduce the chords for each measure).
   
   
4. Chord voicing. You will want to find the best way to play the chord on the mando. This gets into questions of voice leading, maintaining a good bass line, etc. Often your ear will be a good guide here.
   
   Step 3 can involve adapting your chord to your instrument. For hymns, you probably won't have to worry about this a huge amount except for seventh chords, and there are pretty extensive charts available for mando seventh chords.
   
   But really, after all is said and done: This is a pretty easy thing to do, if you know some basic music theory. If not, I think the closest I can get to ELI5 is (a) go read this and this, then (b) go arrange the hymns for mandolin.
   
   I'll try to post an example later this week (arrgh, not on vacation anymore, so much less reddit) for a simple hymn. Or PM me with a scan of a hymn and I'll try to mark it up and show you what I am talking about in steps 1-4 in the context of an example.
   
   EDIT: Another way to practice this chord writing skill: Get a book of hymns with guitar/piano chords already marked, and try out the process I outlined above. This way you can check your answers. This is not a bad start. Heck, it may have everything in it you want already.

There's even a book about them!

My church uses Heavenly Highway Hymns and The Church Hymnal. There is a hymnal that we have never used, Hymns of the Spirit, which seems to be more liturgical(?). By that, I mean it has responsive readings, a call to worship, Lord's Prayer, etc.

If you just want a lot of hymns for reading, here is a great, free resource. If you ever find yourself subbing for churches or attend one, or even want to sub, you might get friendly with the music minister or accompanist and borrow a hymnal.

If you want to practice reading chords as in comping or faking from lead sheets, try this Hymn Fake Book. This is the resource I use most often when doing non-church specific gigs where they want religious music (mostly religiously affiliated retirement communities). It's great to just use the leads to make an interesting and upbeat version of a tune. People seem to love a lot of gospel tunes done up in a dixie way, but that's probably because I'm in the south.

Now, if you want to practice reading chords on the page, I'm really not sure a hymnal is the best option. I honesty find hymn pretty limiting in that the skills they teach as far as reading goes tends to be fairly tailored specifically toward playing hymns. I think a lot of people recommend them for sightreading practice because, well, that's the experience they had because they either took for a teacher who pushed that angle, or they found themselves having to play for churches a lot.

If you're goal is to improve overall sightreading and not specifically for church playing, you might want to take up another approach. If you could clarify what you want to accomplish, I might be able to suggest an approach that fits your needs a little better. It's not even that practicing sightreading hymns is bad, but I find that a lot of sightreading advice is pretty terrible. It comes from well meaning people, but since many of them started when they were very young, they tend to not remember how hard sightreading can be and over advice based on skills they take for granted in their own playing. I've been frustrated to no end over the years by people who didn't understand how bad my sightreading was immediately make suggestions like hymns, or even Chopin Nocturnes, or even Bach inventions for sightreading.