Five Practices of Fruitful Living: the five practices applied to personal faith

Books & author · Published 2026-11-02

Three years after Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Robert Schnase published a companion aimed at individuals rather than institutions. Five Practices of Fruitful Living (Abingdon Press, 2010) keeps the same five names but asks what they mean for one person's life with God and with others. It was written for ordinary church members and for people exploring faith, not for church leaders planning programs.

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Why a second book?

The congregational book had been studied mainly by councils, staff and leadership teams. A recurring question from readers, according to the author's own account in a 2010 Lewis Center article, was what the practices meant for individuals who were not running anything. A congregation can organize welcome, worship, groups, service and giving, but those things become fruitful only when people actually take them up as habits. Fruitful Living addresses that second half of the equation: the daily patterns that shape a person over time.

The book is deliberately practice-based rather than doctrine-based. Instead of beginning with what a Christian must believe, it begins with what Christians do repeatedly, on the view that faith is learned partly by practising it, as a musician or an athlete learns by repetition.

The five practices, turned inward

Each congregational practice has a personal counterpart with a slightly shifted meaning. Materials based on the book summarized the movement as receiving God's love, loving God in return, growing in Christ, serving others and giving back.

Radical hospitality begins with openness to God: receiving grace, saying yes to the Spirit, making room in one's own life before making room for others. Only then does it extend outward as welcome to neighbors and strangers.
Passionate worship becomes the personal habit of loving God in return, in public worship and in private prayer, attentive and expectant rather than routine.
Intentional faith development is a long-term commitment to learning in community: belonging to a group, reading Scripture, being known and encouraged by others.
Risk-taking mission and service is a personal willingness to serve others in ways that stretch us, at home, at work and in the wider world.
Extravagant generosity is the practice of giving back, of money and also of time and attention, as a response to grace and as a way of loosening the grip of possessions.

The book's argument is that these are not five separate duties but facets of a single life of grace. A person who grows in one usually finds the others drawn along.

Format and companions

Like its predecessor, the book is short, with a chapter for each practice, and was designed for group study. A leader guide written with Sally Sharpe appeared in 2010, and many congregations used the book alongside video sessions in a small-group series. A devotional companion, Forty Days of Fruitful Living, offered daily readings for a season such as Lent. Some congregations ran a churchwide program in which the congregational book was studied by leaders while members read the personal one, so that the whole church shared a vocabulary from two angles.

How it differs from the congregational book

The two books share structure and terms but differ in voice and audience. The congregational book speaks to planners and asks what a church should do. The personal book speaks to individuals and asks what a life shaped by grace looks like, including in its struggles: fatigue, doubt, distraction, money worries. It is also gentler in tone, closer to a spiritual guide than a leadership manual. Readers who found the first book demanding sometimes found the second more pastoral; readers who wanted strategy found it less useful.

Reading it critically

Readers have found several questions worth discussing alongside the book. Practices can be framed in a way that sounds like self-improvement, as if faithfulness were a matter of good habits alone; the Christian tradition insists that grace precedes and sustains every practice, and the book's emphasis on receiving God's love is meant to keep that order. Some readers also ask how the practices look for people whose lives are constrained by illness, poverty, caregiving or long working hours. A practice of generosity or service will look different for a retired professional and for a single parent working two jobs. Groups that make room for those differences, rather than holding up one model of the fruitful life, tend to have more honest conversations and fewer people quietly dropping out.

Why it matters for congregations

The pairing illustrates a point many church leaders learn the hard way: congregational vitality cannot be produced by structures alone. A church can have excellent greeters, well-planned worship, many groups, ambitious mission and a careful stewardship program, and still lack depth if members do not take up the practices personally. Conversely, individuals who pray, learn, serve and give need a congregation that makes those practices possible. The two books are two sides of the same claim.

Questions for a study group

Which of the five practices comes most naturally to you, and which least? Why?
What does it mean, in practical terms, to "make room" for God in a crowded week?
Which group or relationship helps you grow in faith right now? If none, what might?
Where has serving others stretched you, or where might it?
What would one step toward more generous living look like this month?