Practicing the Way

What Practicing the Way is

Practicing the Way is a short trade book — about 250 pages in hardcover — built around a single thesis: that the Christian life is best understood as apprenticeship to Jesus, and that apprenticeship has always been shaped by a specific set of practices. Comer lays out three goals (be with Jesus, become like him, do as he did) and nine practices (Sabbath, solitude, prayer, fasting, Scripture, community, generosity, service, witness) that the historic church has used to form those goals into actual life.

It is positioned as the follow-up to Comer’s 2019 book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which diagnosed the problem (a hurried, distracted, formation-poor life). Practicing the Way is the prescription. It is written for what Comer calls "post-Christian" readers — people inside and outside the church who feel the weight of the cultural moment and suspect that the Christian tradition has something to say about it. It assumes very little prior reading.

Why this book broke through where other formation books didn’t

The single biggest practical difference between Practicing the Way and the dozens of spiritual-formation books in its lineage is the companion infrastructure. Comer’s nonprofit (practicingtheway.org) publishes a complete small-group video curriculum, leader guides, and per-practice toolkits — and gives them away. No login wall, no premium tier, no church-license fee. A small group can run the entire 8-week arc using only the website. This is not the model that most Christian publishers use, and it has changed how the book is adopted.

The other piece is the tone. Comer is pastoral rather than prescriptive — he does not tell readers they are doing it wrong, and he does not perform urgency. He reads as the thoughtful person’s formation writer, leaning more on Bonhoeffer and Willard than on conference-circuit motivational rhythms. For readers who have grown tired of "five steps" Christian publishing, that restraint is the thing that makes the book usable. The triplet works here: it doesn’t shame. It doesn’t hurry. It doesn’t pretend formation is easy.

Apprenticeship and the nine practices: the framework

The structural argument of the book is that "apprentice of Jesus" is a more accurate translation of the New Testament word usually rendered "disciple" — and that an apprentice is, by definition, someone who learns a trade by being near the master, watching, imitating, and slowly taking on the master’s way of being. Comer draws this directly from Dallas Willard, whose phrase "the disappearance of moral knowledge" runs underneath the whole book. Apprenticeship has three goals: be with Jesus, become like him, do as he did. Each one anchors a section.

The nine practices — Sabbath, solitude, prayer, fasting, Scripture, community, generosity, service, witness — are presented not as a checklist but as the historic means by which apprentices have actually been formed. None of them are new. What is useful is the assembly. Most readers have heard chapters on a few of these scattered across other books; having them organized into a single rule, with reasons for each, is the part that makes a small group able to actually try them.

The Practicing the Way nonprofit and the free companion site

In 2021, before the book released, Comer stepped down from leading Bridgetown Church to run a nonprofit called Practicing the Way full-time. The nonprofit publishes — at practicingtheway.org — a complete set of small-group materials: video sessions, leader guides, a "rule of life" tool, and individual practice toolkits for each of the nine practices. All of it is free. Donations fund it.

This matters for how the book functions in real life. A church or small group can buy the book, optionally buy the Companion Guide, and then run a full 8-week formation course using the free site — no licensing fee, no per-seat pricing, no premium video tier. That is rare in the Christian publishing world, where small-group video curricula typically run $100–$300 per series. The free companion is the reason adoption rates have been what they are.

Comer’s tone: the actual differentiator

The thing that is hardest to describe and most important to name is Comer’s tone. He writes slowly. He repeats himself on purpose. He uses white space. The chapters end where a normal trade-book chapter would still have three more pages of application — and that restraint is the point. Readers describe the book as feeling more like a retreat than a read, which is intentional. The closest cousin in tone is probably Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, though the theological depth is not the same.

For readers who have spent years inside evangelical publishing — the bullet points, the action steps, the "what now" call-outs — this is a different mode. It is the thoughtful person’s discipleship book. That tone is also the reason the book travels well across traditions: there is nothing in it that requires the reader to be Reformed, or charismatic, or Catholic, or anything in particular. Comer’s vocabulary — apprenticeship, practice, rule of life — sits comfortably in Reformed, Wesleyan, Anglican, and Catholic reading rooms, and that is part of why the book has crossed lines other formation books did not.

Pricing

Where Practicing the Way falls behind

Not a theology book. Readers looking for a careful account of justification, sanctification, union with Christ, or the work of the Spirit will need to read this alongside something denser — Knowing God by J. I. Packer, or Calvin’s Institutes, or a systematic theology. Comer is doing pastoral writing, not theological construction.

Heavy Willard dependence. If you have already read Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines or Renovation of the Heart, the framework here will feel familiar — Comer is, by his own admission, translating Willard for a wider audience. That is a strength for new readers and a redundancy for veteran ones.

Light on liturgy and sacrament. The treatment of confession, Eucharist, and the liturgical calendar is gentle and brief by design. Readers coming from Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or LDS traditions where sacramental and liturgical practice is central will find the framework compatible but underdeveloped on those points.

Some recycled cultural diagnosis. Comer’s 2019 book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry already made the case that contemporary life is corrosive to formation. The opening chapters of Practicing the Way restate parts of that argument for readers who haven’t read it. Those who have may want to skim those sections.

Not a quick read in the way it might appear. The book is short but is built to be read slowly, ideally over weeks, with the practices tried in real time. Treating it as a weekend read flattens what the format is doing.

Practicing the Way vs. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry vs. The Cost of Discipleship

Different books for different stages of the same question. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (2019) is the diagnosis — it argues that contemporary life is structured against formation and offers four practices to slow down. Practicing the Way (2024) is the prescription — it widens the lens from hurry to apprenticeship and lays out the nine practices. Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship (1937) is the older voice in the room — it asks what discipleship costs when "cheap grace" has hollowed it out, and is theologically heavier than either Comer book.

Different strengths. Hurry is better at naming the cultural problem. Practicing the Way is better at giving readers something to actually do about it. Cost of Discipleship is denser, slower, and more theologically demanding than either — it does not give you a rule of life, but it changes how you think about the word "follow."

How to sequence them: read Hurry if you are still trying to name what is wrong with your week. Read Practicing the Way if you have named it and want to start somewhere. Read Bonhoeffer once a year for the rest of your life. Comer himself cites Bonhoeffer throughout — the two books are designed to live on the same shelf.

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