Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations: an unofficial guide to the book

Books & author · Published 2026-11-01

A young grapevine shoot with fresh green leaves and tendrils growing along a wire above grass — A young grapevine shoot in spring. Photo: W.carter, CC0.

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations is a short book by the United Methodist bishop Robert Schnase, first published by Abingdon Press in 2007, that proposes five practices shared by congregations that flourish. Its compact vocabulary, five nouns each sharpened by a demanding adjective, made it one of the most widely studied books on congregational life of its generation. This page describes the book for readers and study groups; it does not reproduce it.

Unofficial page. Vine & Lintel is not affiliated with the author or with Abingdon Press, does not sell the book and earns nothing from it. Quotations are avoided; descriptions are in our own words, based on the public sources listed below.

Publication facts

Author: Robert Schnase, then bishop of the Missouri Area of The United Methodist Church (see our profile).
Publisher: Abingdon Press, Nashville, the trade imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House.
First edition: 2007 (ISBN 978-0-687-64540-4). Some listings give a 2006 copyright date.
Revised and updated edition: 2018, discussed by the author in a Lewis Center for Church Leadership podcast that October.
Translations: according to the publisher, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian and German.
Sales: more than 100,000 copies, according to the Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The argument in brief

The book starts from the mission statement of Schnase's denomination, "to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world", and asks what congregations that actually do this have in common. His answer is five basic activities that every church already does in some form: welcoming people, worshiping, helping people grow in faith, serving others and giving. What distinguishes fruitful congregations is not that they do unusual things but that they do these ordinary things with exceptional consistency and depth, and keep improving them.

Hence the adjectives, which are the book's most memorable device: radical hospitality, passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking mission and service and extravagant generosity. In an interview at the time of publication, Schnase explained that the adjectives were meant to describe the quality of Christ's own ministry and to raise expectations, so that congregations could not easily say "we already do that".

How the book is organized

After an opening chapter that sets out the purpose of the congregation and the idea of fruitfulness, the book gives one chapter to each practice. Each chapter describes the practice, grounds it in Scripture and the Wesleyan tradition, contrasts congregations that practise it with those that do not, and offers lists of concrete behaviors. A closing section encourages congregations to see the five as a single, interlocking way of life and to begin with honest self-assessment. The chapters are short enough to be read in a week, which made the book a natural fit for six-week studies.

How congregations used it

The book spread less through bookstores than through church systems. Conferences and districts adopted the practices as a shared language for planning and evaluation; congregations used it for Lenten studies, leadership retreats and church council planning; pastors preached sermon series on the five practices. The author recommended reading it in small groups over several weeks, spending most of the time on forward-looking conversation about one's own congregation rather than on the text itself. A large ecosystem of companion materials followed, including leader guides, workbooks for each practice, resources for children and youth, and stewardship programs built around extravagant generosity.

Strengths readers point to

Memorable language. Five practices with five adjectives fit on a bulletin cover and are easy to repeat in meetings.
Focus on basics. The book directs attention away from fads and toward activities every congregation already has.
Accessibility. Short chapters, plain prose and practical lists suit lay readers and mixed groups.
Theological grounding. Practices are linked to grace and discipleship rather than to growth techniques alone.

Questions it raises

Like most books on church vitality, it invites critical questions. How should fruitfulness be measured without reducing it to attendance and income? Does the emphasis on growth fit congregations in declining rural areas or in places of great poverty? Can a framework become a checklist that substitutes for discernment? Our essays on fruitfulness and numbers and on why five practices rather than three or twelve take up some of these questions.

Reading it today

Nearly two decades after its first publication, the book reads differently than it did in 2007. Many of the congregations that studied it have since changed denomination, merged or closed; others have grown in unexpected directions, including online worship communities that did not exist when it was written. The core questions travel well: how a church welcomes, worships, forms, serves and gives does not depend on any particular denominational structure. Readers coming to the book now may find it helpful to read the revised edition, to discuss which examples feel dated in their setting, and to pair it with more recent research on congregations, so that the vocabulary serves present realities rather than nostalgia for a period of institutional confidence.

Related books

Five Practices of Fruitful Living (2010) applies the practices to personal discipleship.
Forty Days of Fruitful Living (2010) offers daily readings based on that book.
Cultivating Fruitfulness (2008) was a five-week program of prayer and practice for whole congregations.

Sources

Abingdon Press, author page for Robert Schnase (translations).
Lewis Center for Church Leadership, "An Interview with Bishop Robert Schnase", July 2007.
Lewis Center for Church Leadership, "Five Practices of Fruitful Living", 2010 (sales figure and revised edition in author note).
Lewis Center for Church Leadership, "Ministry Beyond the Wall: Revisiting the Five Fruitful Practices", podcast, October 2018.
OverDrive, library catalog record for the e-book.
Life and Leadership, independent summary of the book.