Christian Questions to Ask Friends
Twenty questions for friends who share your faith: how they are actually doing with God, prayer and reading this month, where they feel like a hypocrite, what their church gives them and what it does not, and what they would want said if their faith started slipping.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How are you doing with God at the moment, honestly?
Why ask it
The last word does the work. Without it you get the answer people give in a church foyer, and with it you often get a pause first, which is usually the sound of someone deciding whether to tell you the real version.
What have you been reading, and has any of it landed?
Why ask it
The second half saves this from becoming a reading report. Plenty of people are working through a plan that is doing nothing for them, and admitting that out loud is more useful than naming the book.
What does your prayer life actually look like this month?
Why ask it
This month, rather than in general, gets you the real state of it: in the car, at three in the morning, or barely at all. A general question invites a description of what they intend to do.
What do you do on the Sundays you do not want to go?
Why ask it
Assumes those Sundays exist, which is why it draws an easier answer than asking whether they do. You learn what carries them when appetite fails: habit, a person who would notice, or nothing much.
Where does your church actually help you, and where does it not?
Why ask it
Asking for both halves keeps it from turning into either a testimonial or a complaint. Most people can name the exact thing they are not getting, and they rarely have anywhere to say it.
What is the hardest thing you have had to believe lately?
Why ask it
This frames difficulty as ordinary rather than as failure, which is why it produces something specific. Answers are often about providence in a particular situation rather than doctrine in general.
How do you tell the difference between God leading you and your own preference?
Why ask it
One of the genuinely hard problems of a practicing life, and almost nobody has a tidy method. Listen for whether they check anything against another person, since that is what separates discernment from confidence.
When did you last change your mind about something you thought was settled?
Why ask it
The answer shows whether their faith is still moving. Someone who cannot name anything in a decade may be steady, or may have stopped examining anything, and the follow-up will tell you which.
What part of church culture do you find hardest to square with what you read in the Gospels?
Why ask it
Giving them room to name a tension invites candor instead of the answer they assume a Christian friend wants to hear. It also tells you what they have been sitting on quietly.
How do you decide when to talk about your faith with someone and when to just be present?
Why ask it
This surfaces how they weigh honesty against pressure, which is one of the harder judgment calls in a life of faith, and one people are rarely asked about directly.
What has a friend done for you spiritually that you still think about years later?
Why ask it
Naming one specific act moves the conversation from belief in the abstract to the concrete things faith looks like between friends. It also tells you, indirectly, what they would want from you.
Who has shaped your faith most outside your own family, and what did they do differently?
Why ask it
Tracing influence back to a particular person usually reveals what they most value in a mentor or a church, which is more informative than asking what they look for.
Where do you feel like a hypocrite?
Why ask it
Blunt, and only appropriate with a friend who trusts you. It goes straight to the gap between practice and belief that most people carry privately, and answering it aloud tends to be a relief rather than a confession.
Is there anything you pray about that you have never told anyone?
Why ask it
Note that they can answer yes without disclosing what it is, which is exactly why it works. Knowing there is something is often enough for you to stop offering advice about the wrong problem.
What do you do with the prayers that have not been answered?
Why ask it
This is where faith actually gets tested, and where the standard phrases run out. People either have somewhere to put it or they have quietly stopped asking, and both answers matter for how you talk to them.
How has suffering, yours or someone else's, changed what you believe about God?
Why ask it
Ask it only if you are prepared to sit with the answer. What tends to come out is not a loss of belief but a change in what they expect from God, which is a harder thing to say in a group.
What do you believe now that would have worried you ten years ago?
Why ask it
A gentler route into the same territory as a question about doubt. It lets someone describe real movement in their thinking without having to call it drift or backsliding.
What would you want a friend to say to you if you told them your faith was slipping?
Why ask it
Asking in advance tells you how to show up for them later, and it makes room for doubt before there is a crisis, when the answer would be much harder to give.
How can I pray for you, and is there something you would rather I simply did?
Why ask it
The second half is the part that gets skipped. Sometimes the honest answer is a lift to an appointment or an evening of childcare, and people will only say so if you make it a legitimate reply.
What do you wish Christians talked about more with each other?
Why ask it
This hands them the choice of subject, which often produces the most candid answer of the conversation: money, sex, mental health, failure, doubt. Whatever they name is usually what they have needed to discuss.
Talking about faith with a friend
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting past the tidy answer
Go first
Answer your own question before you ask it, at the level of honesty you are hoping for. Nobody offers a real answer to a question the asker has not risked anything on.
Ask about a period, not a state
This month, this year, since the move. Bounded questions get specific answers, while asking how their walk with God is going invites a summary they have given a dozen times.
Let the silence run
The pause after a hard question is usually someone weighing up whether to say the true thing. Filling it with a reassurance or a follow-up decides that for them.
Ask one question and stay on it
Following the answer for ten minutes is worth more than working through five topics. The second and third layer of one subject is where the conversation stops being a survey.
What closes the conversation
- Correcting the doctrine in something they have just admitted. Whatever you gain in accuracy you lose in candor, permanently.
- Answering doubt with a verse. Most people who raise it have already heard the verse and it did not help, which is why they are talking to a person instead.
- Turning what they said into a prayer request for anyone else. Assume everything is private unless they say otherwise.
- Telling a leader about a friend's struggle without asking them first. It is the fastest way to end this kind of friendship.
- Converting it into standing accountability. Being asked the same question every fortnight makes people manage their answers.
If one of you is further along
When one friend prays more, reads more or serves more, these questions can easily slide into an examination. If that is you, ask about your own weak areas rather than theirs, and be careful with a question you know you would answer well. If it is the other way round and you feel behind, say so plainly; it is a better opening than pretending, and most people respond to it by dropping their own performance.
If a friend tells you their faith is going
Do not treat it as an emergency in front of them, and do not start with arguments. Ask how long it has been going on and whether anything happened, since doubt often arrives attached to a bereavement, a church that handled something badly, or exhaustion. Keep inviting them to ordinary things rather than to church specifically, and keep showing up after the conversation, because the common experience of people who leave is that the friendships turned out to be conditional. If what they describe sounds like depression rather than doubt, say so gently and ask whether they have talked to a doctor.