What Is Come, Follow Me? The Church's Home Study Program Explained

A lesson arrives every week — but the classroom is your home

"What is Come, Follow Me, exactly? A class? A book? An app?"

If a Latter-day Saint friend has mentioned it, the name alone does not quite explain itself. The short answer is that Come, Follow Me is the home-centered scripture study curriculum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The longer answer is more interesting, because the program was designed to move the centre of religious learning out of the Sunday meeting and into ordinary weekdays — at kitchen tables, on sofas, and in the quiet minutes before work.

Where Come, Follow Me came from

The Church introduced Come, Follow Me in 2019, at the same time it shortened Sunday worship from three hours of meetings to two. That pairing was not a coincidence.

With less time spent in Sunday classes, the expectation — and the support — shifted homeward. Church leaders described the change as a move to a home-centered, Church-supported model of learning. Sunday meetings would sustain and enrich study, but the main, regular work of reading scripture and discussing it would happen through the week, in homes.

The name is an invitation drawn from the Gospels. In the King James Version, Jesus calls his first disciples with simple words that the program takes as its pattern:

Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.

Mark 1:17 (KJV)

Following, in this framing, is not an event once a week. It is a direction of life practised daily, in small increments.

How a week of Come, Follow Me works

The rhythm is deliberately simple, and it repeats every week of the year.

One assigned reading for everyone

Each week has an assigned scripture reading — a set of chapters, sometimes a single book or a portion of one. What makes the program unusual is that the same assignment applies across the whole Church worldwide that week. Children, youth, and adults are all reading the same passages at the same time, each at their own level.

A parent reading the week's chapters, a teenager reading them, and a young child hearing a story drawn from them are, in a real sense, studying together — even when they study at different times and in different rooms.

Study at home through the week

Households are encouraged to read the assigned material during the week, in whatever pattern fits real life. Some families read a little each evening. Some individuals read the whole assignment on a Monday and reflect on it through the week. Some listen while commuting, or pair the reading with a daily verse and a short discussion at a meal.

The manuals do not prescribe a single daily schedule, and that flexibility is intentional. The guidance offers ideas — questions to consider, key doctrines to notice, activities for children, background on the people and places in the text — and invites each household to use what helps and leave the rest.

Sunday classes build on the same reading

Sunday School, which meets every other week, follows the same Come, Follow Me schedule. On alternate Sundays, congregations hold priesthood quorums and Relief Society meetings instead, so classes alternate week by week.

Because everyone has had the same reading available all week, a Sunday School discussion can start from shared ground. The teacher is not introducing unfamiliar material; the class is deepening material the members have already had a chance to live with.

The four-year rotation through the standard works

Come, Follow Me follows a four-year cycle, with each year devoted to one of the four volumes Latter-day Saints regard as scripture — the standard works:

• Old Testament — the focus year in 2026
• New Testament — the focus year in 2027
• Book of Mormon — the following year in the cycle
• Doctrine and Covenants — the fourth year, paired with Church history

Then the cycle begins again. Over four years, a family that follows the program reads through the breadth of all four books, and a child growing up in the program will travel that whole arc more than once before leaving home.

The current year, 2026, is the Old Testament year: Genesis through Malachi, read in weekly portions across the year. In 2027 the focus turns to the New Testament — the life of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, the early Church in Acts, and the letters and Revelation that follow.

If you are curious what this week's portion is, the Latter-day Saints section of Faith Map shows the current Come, Follow Me reading alongside a daily verse, which is an easy way to follow the same rhythm for a week and see how it feels.

The manuals and resources

For most of the program's life, there were separate manuals for different settings. That changed recently, in a way that reflects the home-centered design.

For Home and Church

Since 2025, the main resource has been a combined manual, Come, Follow Me — For Home and Church. It contains the weekly schedule, the assigned readings, study helps, and teaching ideas in one place, usable by a parent at home, an individual studying alone, or a teacher preparing a Sunday class. One manual, one schedule, every setting.

Alongside it, the Church provides materials tailored for youth and for children, with simpler retellings, activities, and illustrations pitched at younger readers. Scripture study resources, videos, and artwork are also published for each week, and the full schedule and materials are made freely available by the Church in print and online.

No children required

A common misunderstanding is that Come, Follow Me is a children's program. It is not. Family study is a major aim, but the core assignment and main manual are written for adults and youth as much as for households with young children. Single adults and couples without children follow the same schedule, and congregations often form study groups for members who live alone.

What a real week can look like

In practice, a week is usually modest, and the program seems built to survive modest weeks. A household might read two chapters after dinner on Tuesday, miss Wednesday, catch a short video on Thursday, and talk about one striking verse on Saturday. A parent of toddlers might manage only the children's retelling that week — and that, too, counts.

The point the materials return to is regularity over volume: a little real engagement, most weeks, over years. That slow accumulation is how the four-year cycle does its work.