Come Follow Me Study Guide
Come Follow Me is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' home-centered, church-supported scripture study program. Every member of the Church studies the same passages each week - which means Sunday School lessons, family home evenings, and personal study can all connect around the same text. LDS Sunday School helps you build a complete, plain-language study for any week's reading in seconds.
What Come Follow Me Is
The Church introduced Come Follow Me in its current home-centered form in January 2019. Before that, members studied different manuals in different classes, and study during the week was left mostly to each family to figure out. The change was deliberate. President Russell M. Nelson taught that the home is the center of gospel learning, and the Sunday meeting schedule was shortened to two hours to give families more time to study together during the week.
The program runs on a repeating four-year cycle. One year covers the Old Testament, the next the New Testament, then the Book of Mormon, then the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history. Every ward in the world studies the same block of scripture in the same week. A missionary in Peru, a Primary child in Idaho, and a Gospel Doctrine class in Ghana are all reading the same verses at the same time.
How the Weekly Reading Connects Home and Church
The design assumes that most of your study happens at home, and that Sunday reinforces what you already read. When you come to Sunday School having studied the passage, the class discussion means more because you bring your own questions and impressions. The teacher is not introducing the material cold. He or she is helping the class go deeper into text that everyone already touched during the week.
This is why keeping up matters more than it might seem. A week you skip is a week where the Sunday lesson lands on unprepared ground. You do not need to read every supplementary note or answer every question in the manual. Reading the assigned chapters and sitting with them for a few minutes is enough to change how the Sunday discussion feels and how much you take from it.
Making the Study Your Own
The manual offers questions and activities, but it is a guide, not a script. Some weeks a single verse will hold your attention and you will never reach the rest of the outline. That is not failing the lesson. The purpose is not coverage. It is to bring you closer to Jesus Christ through His word, and sometimes one verse does more of that than a whole chapter.
Adapt the pace to your life. A family with young children might focus on one story and a picture. A single adult might study forty minutes and write pages. When a passage stops making sense, that is where LDS Sunday School can help. Enter the reference and it builds a plain-language study with context and discussion questions, so any week's block is ready to study or teach.
Key Principles
- ✓Come Follow Me follows a four-year cycle through the Standard Works
- ✓Home-centered study is the foundation - Sunday School supports and extends what happens at home
- ✓Each week's reading includes the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, or Doctrine and Covenants
- ✓Family Home Evening is one of the best places to bring Come Follow Me to life for children
- ✓LDS Sunday School generates complete studies for any passage across all four Standard Works
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Start FreeFrequently Asked Questions
What is the Come Follow Me schedule for this year?
Come Follow Me follows a four-year cycle through the standard works. One year is the Old Testament, the next the New Testament, then the Book of Mormon, then the Doctrine and Covenants. The Church publishes the exact weekly reading assignments each year in the printed manual and in the Gospel Library app, with a specific block of chapters listed for every week.
Do I have to follow the Come Follow Me manual exactly?
No. The manual is a resource, not a requirement. It offers questions, activities, and background, but you are free to study the assigned chapters however works for your family. Many members read the passage first on their own, then use the manual for ideas when they feel stuck. Following the weekly reading matters more than completing every activity in the outline.
How is Come Follow Me different from the old Sunday School manuals?
The older manuals were written mainly for teachers to use in class, with home study left largely undirected. Come Follow Me puts the reading in the hands of individuals and families first, and Sunday classes support that home study. The Church also shortened the Sunday schedule in 2019 to give families more time to study together during the week.
Can I use Come Follow Me if I study alone?
Yes. Come Follow Me was written for individuals as much as for families. If you live alone or your household does not study together, you can follow the same weekly reading on your own. Keeping the same schedule as your ward means the Sunday School discussion connects directly to what you studied that week, so you are never studying in isolation.