What Is Come Follow Me? A Plain Answer for New Teachers and Families

If you have recently been called to teach, or you are just trying to get your family study off the ground, you have probably heard the phrase Come Follow Me about a hundred times. It is not uncommon to nod along in church like we know exactly what it means. So here is the plain answer.

Come Follow Me is the Church's curriculum for studying the scriptures, and the important part is that it is one curriculum for both home and church. The same weekly reading that your family works through at the kitchen table is the same one Sunday School discusses on Sunday. That is on purpose. The home is supposed to be the center of gospel learning, and church is meant to support what is already happening there, not carry the whole load.

How the Rotation Works

The curriculum rotates through the standard works, one volume per year. One year is the Book of Mormon, one is the Doctrine and Covenants, one is the New Testament, and one is the Old Testament. For 2026, we are in the Old Testament.

Each year is broken into 52 weekly blocks. A week might cover a few chapters of Genesis, and the next week moves on. Every class in the Church, from Primary to Gospel Doctrine, is looking at that same block during that same week. If you want to see the whole year laid out, we keep the full 2026 schedule on the site, week by week.

Personally, I think the genius of the system is that it puts everyone on the same page. When the kids come home from Primary and the parents come home from Sunday School, they were all in the same chapters. The dinner conversation can actually go somewhere.

What It Means for a Teacher

As a teacher, the curriculum gives you the week's reading and some guidance, but it does not give you a script. And honestly, the weekly material is broad. You could teach ten different lessons from the same block, and two classes down the hall from each other can walk away with entirely different points. That is not a bug. The manual expects you to pick what your class needs.

That is also the hard part. Picking means preparing, and preparing takes time that a lot of us do not have between kids, work, and everything else. It is not uncommon to find yourself putting a lesson together Saturday night, or worse, during sacrament meeting.

With that, my advice for anyone starting out is to lower the bar in the right way. You do not need to cover everything. You need one principle from the week's reading, a couple of honest questions, and a willingness to let the class do some of the work. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we know everything should lead toward Christ anyway, so if you are ever lost in a chapter, that is the direction to walk.

What It Means for a Family

For families, Come Follow Me is meant to be flexible. Some families read every day. Some do one night a week and call it good. The curriculum does not grade you. The win is that the scriptures are open in your house at all, and that the kids hear you talk about them like they matter.

If you want help turning the week's reading into something teachable, that is what we built ComeFollowMe.io for. You tell it who you are teaching, whether that is a Primary class or your own kids at family home evening, and it gives you a lesson plan built on the week's block. It is a starting point that still leaves the teaching, and the Spirit, up to you.

But whether you use a tool or a notebook, the curriculum itself is simple at its core. One book, one year. One block, one week. Everyone reading together. That is Come Follow Me.