The Community Practice: A Four-Session Guide to Cultivating Community in the Way of Jesus

by John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way

Overview

In a lonely, fractured culture, Jesus offers a new kind of family. Discover the communal Way of Jesus through this guide from New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer and the team at Practicing the Way.

Despite the unprecedented connectivity of the modern era, our time is marked by isolation, transience, and superficiality. But Jesus invites his followers into genuine relationships, not just around a stage, but around a table—a place that offers intimacy, joy, healing, and commitment.

Designed to be used with four engaging video sessions freely available online, the Community Practice from Practicing the Way offers spiritual exercises, reflection questions, guided readings, and additional resources to help you and your community.

This guide will equip you to:

• Build rhythms of intentional connection with others
• Create safe spaces in which to share your joys and sorrows
• Confess your brokenness and begin healing
• Develop committed relationships that grow in mature love

Living in community in our time of radical individualism is not always easy—but it’s beautiful, opening us to healing, happiness, and love.

Part of a series of nine core practices that together build a Rule of Life for following Jesus in the modern world, each guide can be read individually or together in any order:
The Sabbath Practice
The Prayer Practice
The Fasting Practice
The Solitude Practice
The Generosity Practice
The Scripture Practice
The Community Practice
The Service Practice
The Witness Practice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593603376
Publisher:	PRH Christian Publishing
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.46(w) x 8.41(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

John Mark Comer is the founding pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon, a teacher and writer with Practicing the Way, and the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including Practicing the Way, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and Live No Lies.

Practicing the Way is a nonprofit that creates spiritual formation resources for churches and small groups learning how to become apprentices of the Way of Jesus. We believe one of the greatest needs of our time is for people to discover how to become lifelong disciples of Jesus. To that end, we help people learn how to be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did through the practices and rhythms he and his earliest followers lived by.

Read an Excerpt

Getting Started

Welcome

The modern world is facing a crisis of loneliness. The digital age has confused connectivity with community. Many of us ache to know and be known, to love and be loved, to belong to a family.

And yet we fear it, too, scared we’ll get hurt, or be rejected, or feel constrained by commitment.

In our lonely age, Jesus’ invitation is more provocative than ever before. His call to “come and follow” him is a call to join his community—which he likened to a family. Not a family in the modern Western imagination of mom, dad, and 2.5 kids, but in the ancient Mediterranean sense of a large, extended family of parents and grandparents and cousins and neighbors and co-workers and friends who aren’t technically blood, yet are family—what sociologists call “fictive kinship groups” and the New Testament writers call “brothers and sisters.”

But we won’t find this kind of community just by attending church on Sunday. As important as it is to gather for worship with our local church, we each still have to find and form our own “fictive kinship group”—our own family within the larger village or tribe that is the church.

In this Practice, we will explore the key skills required to do this. It’s not rocket science; it’s as simple as sharing meals, building joyful connections, being vulnerable with one another about our sorrows and sins, and staying together when (not if) things get hard.

Living in community is not easy, and it won’t just “happen” in our busy, disconnected world. It will require practice. But if you say yes to Jesus’ invitation to become a part of his family, it has the potential to deeply change your life for the good.

Welcome to the Practice of community.

The Nine Practices

Community is just one of nine core Practices in the body of resources available from Practicing the Way. The Practices are spiritual disciplines centered around the life rhythms of Jesus. They are designed not to add even more to your already overbusy life, but to slow you down and create space for the Spirit of God to form you to be with Jesus, become like him, and do what he did. Ultimately, they are a way to experience the love of God.

To run another Practice or learn more, turn to page 106.

How to Use This Guide

A few things you need to know

This Practice is designed to be done in community, whether with a few friends around a table, within your small group, in a larger class format, or with your entire church.

The Practice is four sessions long. We recommend meeting together every week or every other week. For those of you who want to spend more time on this Practice, we’ve included an additional four weeks of bonus conversations in the appendix to go deeper in Scripture and discussion. You are welcome to pause for these conversations in between sessions or skip over them.

You will all need a copy of this Companion Guide. You can purchase a print or ebook version from your preferred retailer or find a free digital PDF version at launch.practicingtheway.org. We recommend the print version so you can stay away from your devices during the Practices, as well as take notes during each session. But we realize that digital works better for some.

Each session should take about one to two hours, depending on how long you allow for discussion and whether or not you begin with a meal. See the sample session on the following page.

Are you a group leader or facilitator? Log in to your online Dashboard or sign up at launch.practicingtheway.org to find ideas, best practices, and tips on running this Practice. Page 110 also offers helpful information and tips on running this Practice.

Our Practices are designed to work in a variety of group sizes and environments. For that reason, your gatherings may include additional elements like meals or worship time or may follow a structure slightly different from the following sample. Please adapt as you see fit.

Sample Session

Here is what a typical session could look like.

Welcome

Welcome the group and open in prayer.

Share a meal (60 min.)

Gather around a table to eat together and share a conversation.

Introduction (2–3 min.)

Watch the introduction to the session and pause the video when indicated for your first discussion.

Discussion 01: Practice reflection in triads (15–20 min.)

Process your previous week’s spiritual exercise in smaller groups of three to five people with the questions in the Guide.

Teaching (20 min.)

Watch the teaching portion of the video.

Discussion 02: Group conversation (15–30 min.)

Pause the video when indicated for a group-wide conversation.

Testimony and tutorial (5–10 min.)

Watch the rest of the video.

Prayer to close

Close by praying the liturgy in the Guide, or however you choose.

The Weekly Rhythm

The four sessions of this Practice are designed to follow a four-part rhythm that is based on our model of spiritual formation.

Learn

Gather together as a community for an interactive experience of learning about the Way of Jesus through teaching, storytelling, and discussion. Bring your Guide to the session and follow along.

Practice

On your own, before the next session, go and “put it into practice,”* as Jesus himself said. We will provide weekly spiritual exercises to integrate this practice into your everyday life, as well as recommended resources to go deeper.

Reflect

Reflection is key to spiritual formation. After your practice and before the next session, set aside 10–15 minutes to reflect on your experience. Reflection questions are included in this Guide at the end of each session.

Process together

When you come back together, watch the introduction, and then start by sharing your reflections with your group. This moment is crucial because we need one another to process our lives before God and make sense of our stories. If you are meeting in a larger group, you will need to break into smaller subgroups for this conversation so everyone has a chance to share.