80% of the world’s evangelical Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the last 50 years, God’s church has grown exponentially in these areas.

These regions have tremendous mission sending potential to help bring the gospel to unreached peoples, but they currently send only 20% of the world’s cross-cultural missionaries!

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This infographic provides a visual score for seven data points ranked on a 0 to 100 scale. Faded icons show scores for other countries on the mobilization index. See below for actual scores and country-specific insights.

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Is it cruel to deliberately let your child suffer grief and loss? As parents, shouldn&rsquo;t we do what we can to shelter them from pain?
My wife, Stephanie, has always looked forward to having children. By the time we were married, I&rsquo;d talked her down to having four (or six). So when the pregnancy test was positive at the end of our first year of marriage, we were ecstatic. Thad was a bright spark of joy in our lives.
Then came a few years without another baby. And a few more years. Because having our firstborn was so easy, we never wondered about infertility until we couldn&rsquo;t ignore signs anymore. Seven years went by. Stephanie&rsquo;s eyes followed pregnant women and babies while we sat in church. Thad would find her curled up on the couch and would snuggle up next to her, knowing she was wishing and waiting for another child.
Then came the news that Stephanie had an incurable immune disease and a tumor&mdash;a benign one, but still. We prayed, she looked into alternate avenues for a cure, she took medicine. And the tumor shrunk! Even more, the immune disease that didn&rsquo;t have a cure disappeared. God worked a miracle. And then, for the second time in our lives, we saw that little blue line on the stick that meant we were going to have another baby. Praise God! We told our family, our friends, our church&mdash;everyone who had prayed and sat with us in our waiting. Then, just a few precious weeks later, it was clear something was wrong. By the end of the day, we couldn&rsquo;t deny that we had lost the baby.
At some point, we were going to have to tell everyone what happened. But before that, we had to tell our son. By this time Thad was seven, and unusually clued into others&rsquo; emotions. He knew something wasn&rsquo;t right. We didn&rsquo;t really have a choice in telling him what had happened. But would we put a brave face on it? Skirt around how hard this was for us? Pretend it was all going to be ok?&nbsp;
We chose brutal honesty. I can still see the three of us sitting down on the couch to tell him that we had lost the baby. Still see his face crumpling as the words sunk in. We answered his questions about what would happen to his little sister&rsquo;s body. We gave him the details. He asked what would happen to her spirit. We told him all that we knew from what we were reading in God&rsquo;s Word.&nbsp;
Even though it was so painful to watch him process that loss, I believe we did the right thing in being straightforward. Letting Thad enter into grief helped me enter into my own. Watching him mourn broke my heart and let me fully experience the loss. Answering his questions forced me to confront my own. That same year, we were able to get pregnant again, and Thad was overly protective of his mama. But I think he&rsquo;s more resilient for having fully walked with us in grief. His grit and quiet acceptance of difficult things is hard-won.
I think, too, that we did the right thing in not giving our son pat answers to hard theological questions. I didn&rsquo;t really know what to tell him about whether the baby we lost is with Jesus now, so we didn&rsquo;t hide that we weren&rsquo;t sure. But we were sure, deeply sure, that God is a loving God who takes care of his kids. Thad knows that too, and I hope that it means that someday when he doesn&rsquo;t know all the answers, it won&rsquo;t shake his faith in the deep truths of who God is.
So, is it cruel to let our kids experience grief and loss? Should we shelter them from it? I don&rsquo;t believe so. God the Father himself invites us into suffering. In Romans, Paul tells us that we are &ldquo;the children of God [and] if we are children, then we are heirs&mdash;heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ&hellip;&rdquo; (Romans 8:14-17) We get to inherit the kingdom and every spiritual blessing because we are his children! But Paul goes on to say, we are &ldquo;co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.&rdquo; (vs 17) Suffering is a prerequisite to glory.
Suffering is difficult, but we don&rsquo;t walk this road alone. God the Father was willing to watch his own son be crushed (Isaiah 53:10), and as we follow in his footsteps, we need to learn to allow our kids to experience grief and loss, too.

Via Families

Processing Grief Alongside our Children

Processing Grief Alongside our Children

Ian Fraiser