Welcome to Faith-filled Families
Spread Faith and Love
Increase Support for Families through Christian Faith Traditions
Help More Children Grow in their Faith
Faith-filled Families is an initiative dedicated to empowering parents and caregivers as the primary teachers of faith in their children’s lives. Rooted in the belief that faith formation begins at home, our work centers on equipping families with practical, accessible tools that support spiritual growth from the earliest years.
Housed within the Department of Lifelong Learning at Virginia Theological Seminary, Faith-filled Families is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Christian Parenting and Caregiving initiative. This funding supports a five-year action-research project focused on strengthening the partnership between families, preschools, and congregations. Our work helps communities better understand how to support parents and caregivers in their children's religious formation—while also nurturing parents’ own faith journeys.
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We collaborate with church-based preschools and congregations of different denominations, all within a 100-mile radius of Virginia Theological Seminary.
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Families are provided with thoughtfully designed physical, digital, and practice-based resources developed by the Faith-filled Families team, professionals in children’s spirituality, and seminarians enrolled in Virginia Theological Seminary’s children’s spirituality courses.
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In addition, parents have access to educational opportunities and support groups that create space for shared learning, guidance, and mutual encouragement as they navigate Christian parenting together.
Throughout the project, non-invasive research methods will be used to center the voices of parents and early childhood care providers, ensuring that their needs, challenges, and experiences shape the resources and support offered. Attention will be given to both parents’ spiritual growth and children’s faith development, allowing the initiative to better understand how Christian parenting is formed and sustained over time. The project’s findings will be published and shared widely, encouraging other communities to build stronger, more intentional connections between families, congregations, and early childhood settings in the spiritual formation of children.