Forming Faith Blog

4 Key Faith Practices: Caring Conversations

Posted on July 7 2026 by Gregory Rawn

Caring conversations, one of the 4 Key Faith Practices, form faith and build trusting relationships in the home, congregation, and beyond.

An Asian family having a caring conversation.
Four Keys and Five Principles

Back in January 2026, Spirit & Truth Publishing took on the mantle of the faith-at-home devotional resource Taking Faith Home from Milestones Ministry. Milestones Ministry is, like Spirit & Truth, a small business-ministry devoted to faith formation, specifically the importance of faith formation in the home. The main resources that they have published are Faith Milestones and, until recently, Taking Faith Home (TFH). Due to the retirements of partners Dr. David W. Anderson and Gloria Anderson, the remaining partners, Debbie and Burt Streicher, decided to focus on the Milestones resources and pass along TFH to Spirit & Truth.

Taking Faith Home is a double-sided, half-sheet resource to facilitate devotional practices in the home for households and individuals of all ages (the page design is to make it easier for congregations to include the resource in worship bulletins, though it can also be distributed electronically). TFH follows the Revised Common Lectionary and is the sister resource to our Living the Word: Sharing God’s Story @ Home resource for the Narrative Lectionary.

Both Taking Faith Home and Sharing God’s Story @ Home use the Four Key Faith Practices framework based on the doctoral work of Dr. David W. Anderson and the Five Principles of Faith Formation (as described in a recent blog post by Dr. Anderson).

For the next four weeks, I will be exploring the Four Keys and how they can encourage faith formation.

What Is a Faith Practice?

At its most basic, a faith practice is a repeated action intended to help the practitioner grow in their faith. Such practices are the foundation of faith formation. There are many types of faith practices (also called spiritual practices), but Spirit & Truth Publishing sorts them into four main categories: prayer, worship, fellowship, and service. One can (and should) certainly add learning/education to this list (we did not, in part, because we use these categories in support of learning, so including that in the list would be redundant for our purposes).

Dr. Anderson was more specific in the Four Keys, which are 

  • Caring Conversations
  • Devotions
  • Service
  • Rituals and Traditions

The Four Keys (and the devotional resources based on those) are valuable for individuals, couples, and intergenerational relationships (in the home and congregation). You can find out more about intergenerational ministry, and why we should do it on our What Is Intergenerational Ministry? page.

First Key: Caring Conversations

A caring conversation is just what it sounds like: a conversation within a caring relationship. This can be any type of caring relationship, including parent-child, spouses/partners, friends, other people of faith, or even strangers (if the intent of the conversation is caring). For us, this would fall into the category of fellowship (building relationships within the Body of Christ).

Any Topic

A caring conversation can be on any topic that encourages conversation partners to build a positive, caring relationship. However, conversations on informational topics, debates, and arguments do not tend to be relationship-building (or at least positive relationship-building). However, conversations about a topic of interest can be relationship-building, especially if it is a topic of strong interest (and especially, especially if it involves an adult listening to a child talk about a strong interest). These conversations tend to be less about the information itself and more about getting to know the “teacher.”

Checking In

The simplest topic is “How are you?” or “What’s happening in your life?” As these can be overly generic (and possibly overwhelming) questions, a typical prompt is “What was a high (positive experience) and a low (negative or challenging experience) for you today? This gives a level of specificity that gives each speaker a way to think of their day (or other time period), and the listener gains a broader understanding of the speaker’s experiences. I have personally found that asking about the “highest high” and “lowest low” to be unhelpful, since that involves a lot more mental judging by the speaker.

This “checking in” can even be valuable if the conversation partners have been together all day, since the focus on highs and lows is about a person’s unique experience. As we know, different people can have different experiences of the same event.

Faith Topics

Relationship-building is an important component of faith. However, to really make a caring conversation a faith practice, we need to include a faith-related topic. These can also be wide-ranging, including:

  • Reading, watching, or listening to a Bible passage and reflecting on it.
  • Reading, watching, or listening to a devotional reflection and responding to it.
  • Asking for spiritual questions, observations, or perspectives (anywhere from “Does God laugh?”, “Why did God put our noses on the front of our faces?,” or “Why does God let earthquakes happen?”)
  • Asking about church or other practices (e.g., “What was your favorite song at church today?”)
  • Asking about living your faith (e.g., “What did you do to share God’s love with someone today?”)
Benefits from Caring Conversations

There are a multitude of physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual benefits of regular caring conversations. Two include:

  • Building relationships of trust– Within a family and beyond it, it is important to build trust and help your conversation partners (especially children and teens) know that you are a safe person to talk to.
  • Growing in faith together– No one has all the answers, especially in terms of faith. But we all, in every generation, have something to teach and a perspective to share that can benefit everyone. I would encourage adults to practice a level of vulnerability (e.g., “I don’t understand that either.”) and openness (e.g., “What do you think this might mean?”).

I found a few articles and blog posts that might be valuable to you:

A Few Tips

As a faith practice—spiritual discipline—it is helpful to make caring conversations a priority. 

  • Make it a habit. Talk during or right after a shared meal. Integrate it into a bedtime ritual. Check in during a car ride from school, to practice, or anywhere else y’all are stuck in the car together.
  • Make that habit into a devotional time. We’ll look more closely into Devotions (the second Key Practice) next week, but at its most basic, devotional time is a period set aside for spiritual reflection. You can use Taking Faith Home (RCL) or Sharing God’s Story @ Home (NL) for help!

In Christ,

Gregory Rawn (Publisher)

Order Faith Formation Resources

Are you planning for summer and the 2026-2027 faith formation programming? Order an affordable VBS-ready Learning Together unit and program-year curriculum for the Narrative Lectionary (Year 1, 2026-2027), Revised Common Lectionary (Years A & B, 2026-2027), or Key Bible Stories (non-lectionary, PK-2nd, 3rd-6th).

New RCL faith-at-home resource!

I’m excited to announce a new product series for Spirit & Truth Publishing: Taking Faith Home. Taking Faith Home is a set of weekly devotional resources (often distributed as worship bulletin inserts) that follows the Revised Common Lectionary. We offer it as a Church Year (Dec. 2025 to Nov. 2026) and a Program Year (Sept. 2026 to May 2027). You can also purchase by quarter, such as Summer and Fall. Learn more here and read a review!

VBS, Events, Retreats, and More!

Are you looking for resources for VBS, topical Sunday school, family/intergenerational events, retreats, and more?

Learning Together is a series of affordable, five-lesson units on a variety of topics. Our faith formation resources are easy to use, theologically sound, and inclusive. Each unit can be used at any time in many different settings, but here are a few suggestions:

+ VBS: Paul’s Adventures (NEW!), Celebrations, Created to Care, God’s Gift of Water, Heroes of the Bible
+ Education, Events, and Retreats: The I AM Statements of Jesus (free!), Travelers (Immigrants and Refugees), Do Justice, Celebrations, Women of the Old Testament, Bible 101

Building Faith has recommended two of our units as VBS curriculum: Paul’s Adventures (reviewed in 2026) and Celebrations (reviewed in 2025)!

You can also read outside reviews on both our Do Justice and Created to Care units.

Our Resources

At Spirit & Truth Publishing, we might have exactly what you are looking for:

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