Last month around 5,000 of us from 49 states and 41 countries gathered in Orlando to worship our risen and reigning King. At our Missions Pre-Conference (7 plenaries, 15 workshops) we pondered our glorious task of heralding the good news around the globe. At our National Conference (9 plenaries, 41 workshops, 3 auxiliary events) we beheld the Lord of glory in the Gospel of Luke. At our Faith at Work Post-Conference (3 plenaries, 3 panels) we explored the complex intersection between vocation and the gospel.

By God's grace, all of our TGC13 conference media—78 talks—are now available, with translations of all plenary sessions and selected workshops in Mandarin, Farsi, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. All of this content is free to be used and shared around the world. As our founding documents state, TGC's desire is "to serve the church we love . . . in an effort to renew the contemporary church in the ancient gospel of Christ." To that end, we hope you will be instructed, edified, and spurred on by this content from our fourth biennial National Conference. May Jesus alone be exalted.

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Austin Stone Church has launched an incredible adoption campaign to try and adopt all 244 kids needing adoption in the city of Austin, Texas. They have also created an extensive foster care initiative to provide Christian homes to children who need a family.

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The Storyframes Collective is a collaborative effort between The Gospel Coalition and the Austin Stone Church for the purpose of celebrating the extraordinary work of God in the lives of ordinary people. Through excellence in the art of storytelling (film, photojournalism, spoken word, and writing), this project aims to recount God's redemptive, transforming work in the lives of our brothers and sisters. In form, this website collects encouraging stories about God's grace. In function, we want these stories to inspire you to praise God.

As a collective, we hope that people from around the world will join us in collecting and telling the amazing stories of God's grace and the power of the gospel. We hope this project will increase your faith, encourage your spirit, and open your eyes to the extraordinary work of God every day in your life and in the lives of others around you.

While these stories differ in characters, formats, and locations, they share the same hero: God. Whether highlighting addiction recovery, healing, renewal, transformation, or any other form of good news, they testify to God's power and grace, made available to us through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

We hope you not only enjoy reading, hearing, and seeing these stories, but also take time to observe the stories of those around you. Tell others the story of what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ, and tell us your story—what God has done in you.

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However, if you are in the room long enough, something needs to be said. Eventually, the grieving want to hear something, if only a few words, from their leaders. So especially young pastors need to learn what to say when the right time comes along. How do we glorify Jesus and comfort the brokenhearted? If you do not know the answer to this question, you are not alone, but let me warn you that day is coming for you if it has not already.

I will never forget 2012 when both my dad and also my sister were going through cancer. My dad went to be with Jesus in August, and my sister is doing well today in 2013. What my family needed most from our pastors was silent presence and respect. But there was a time where we needed to hear words of love and encouragement along with something from God. The people who helped me the most patiently waited through the silence to speak God's Word to us in due time.

Here are three things that need to be said at the right moment:

1. "I want you to know the church is here for you and your family."

Yes, this promise seems obvious as an outsider, but it is what the hurting need to hear and see from their church family. If it is all you say in the time of tragedy, hurting people need to know they have someone to call for help. It is amazing how many details and duties come along with tragedy, such as informing people and providing food for family coming in town. Hurting people need to know that they have somewhere to go with all the extra things that come with hurting.

2. "Can I pray for you?"

It is true that grieving people do not want a sermon, but I have never seen anyone turn down prayer. You are leading them to the place where they really need to go and where they will need to stay in the days to come. Do not be shy about this offer. It is so easy to lose your bearings in time of suffering. We all need help bringing God to the center of our experience.

3. "God's Word says . . . "

This seems difficult to say for many reasons. You as the pastor may feel overwhelmed by their direct experience of pain, which you do not share. So you think it is awkward to speak up at the right time, but that is not what they are thinking. In my experience, the suffering are desperately looking for solid ground to stand on. Give it to them. You don't have to open a Bible, but speak a short passage of God's truth for them to hang on for that day. Trust me, they will.

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Argentine-born evangelist Luis Bush coined the phrase "10/40 Window" in 1989. The Joshua Project currently defines the 10/40 Window as those 69 countries that sit between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. This is the heart of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. It has been estimated that 90 percent of the 4.4 billion people living in the 10/40 Window are unevangelized; yet only 10 percent of our global missionary force serves there.

Why Not the West

According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, in 2010 the U.S. sent out 127,000 of the world's estimated 400,000 missionaries. It is wonderful to see U.S. churches accepting their role as senders. However, missionaries sent from the United States may not be the answer to opening the 10/40 Window.

In the current geo-political environment the United States and its citizens are not favorably viewed by a majority of the governments in the 10/40 Window countries. Of the 10 countries in the world that are classified as hardest for U.S. citizens to receive visas, seven of those are located in that area. In much of the 10/40 Window, missionary visas are simply not granted to foreigners.

The U.S. Department of State has issued travel warnings and recommends U.S. citizens avoid travel in 23 of the countries. The Open Doors World Watch List also counts the top 10 most dangerous countries for Christians in the world within the 10/40 Window.

Women account for a disproportionately large percentage of U.S. missionaries, with single women outnumbering single men 4 to 1 on the mission field. While our culture views the involvement of women in missions as a blessing, much of the rest of the world disagrees with us. In fact, many of the cultures contained within the 10/40 Window are hostile to women—especially Western women.

The United States and its missionaries are simply not welcome in much of the 10/40 regions. But this doesn't mean Americans should fold up our missions tents and ignore the billions of unsaved in these parts of the world. Jesus promised us hard times: "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account" (Matthew 5:11). John Piper echoed this same sentiment when he wrote, "If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full." Nobody said missions was easy. Still, there may be a better approach.

Sending from the Global South

In recent decades we have seen an eruption of evangelical churches in Latin America and Southern Africa. New churches and individual conversions are emerging in the Global South. Many of these newer churches now have a generation or two of spiritual maturity and are sending out their own missionaries.

As churches in the Global South have developed, many U.S. missionaries and churches have changed their approach to these regions and are beginning to transition into supporting roles. Churches in Latin America and Southern Africa are now seeking theological resources, biblical training, and assistance in forming seminaries. In many of these countries, U.S. missionaries are focusing more on discipleship and theological training.

Already missionaries are going out from these regions. But why not send more? Compared to those from the United States, missionaries originating from the Global South can gain easier access to countries in the 10/40 Window. For instance, Latin American passports can gain access to countries that U.S. and Western European passports can't. It may be time for our churches to embrace the shifting landscape. Rather than sending missionaries from our home country, we can send to the 10/40 Window our brothers and sisters from the Global South.

Embracing Evolving Dynamics

The lives of our U.S. missionaries are no more valuable in God's eyes than our Latin and African brothers and sisters. But the issue is not about danger or ease of passage. This is about wise use of the resources God has given us. Churches in the United States possess wealth unmatched in Christian history. Those vast resources could be effectively used sending U.S. missionaries into the Global South and providing discipleship and theological training to our brothers and sisters in Latin America and Southern Africa. Let's give the churches in the Global South the training, resources, and financing they need to reach the 10/40 Window. Churches in the United States and churches in the Global South can partner together to evangelize the billions of lost souls in regions that need to be evangelized with ferocity.

After decades of taking the lead, we in the Western world may need to take a more supportive role and let our brothers in the South handle the face-to-face evangelism. What matters most is that we work together as a global church to find a way through the 10/40 Window in order to share the gospel with billions of the lost who are not being reached. In the end, what matters most is not who was sent but that God will receive the praise and the glory.

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The Story: A new 5-year constituency study released by the State of the Plate gives an inside look at the financial, giving, and spiritual practices of 4,413 people who donate 10% or more each year. According to the Christian Post, researchers compared tithers to non-tithers using nine financial health indicators, and found that tithers were better off in every category. "The weird thing is, a tither looks at that and says to himself, 'Well I'm better off because I give.' A non-tither looks at that and says, 'Oh, they give because they're better off,'" said Brian Kluth, the founder of the study.

The Takeaways: Some of the more interesting findings from the study include:

• 77% of those who "tithe" give 11%-20% or more of their income, far more than the baseline of 10%.

• 97% make it a priority to give to their local church.

• 70% "tithe" based on their gross income, not their net.

• 63% started giving 10% or more between childhood and their twenties

• Tithers carry much less debt than most people and are financially better off than Christian non-tithers—80% of "tithers" have no unpaid credit card bills; 74% have no car payments; 48% own their home; and 28% are completely debt-free.

• What keeps non-tithing Christians from giving: 38% say they can't afford it; 33% say they have too much debt; and 18% said their spouse does not agree about tithing.

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How many of your friends know the real you? How many would know if you were struggling, really struggling? And to be honest, how many of them would you tell?

For many years, I went through seasons of depression all on my own. I wandered in the darkness, feeling isolated, helpless, and in complete despair. I often stood among the crowd at my church each Sunday, watching everyone fellowship, and feeling utterly alone. Hiding my thoughts and feelings inside, I felt great shame and guilt about the battle going on in my mind. Because if people really knew the horrible, dark, and frightening thoughts I had, they would surely reject me.

But then God brought a few friends in my life with whom I could be real, honest, and transparent. I told them my story, revealing the depths of pain I had endured. God used those friends to encourage and support me. They pointed me to the hope of the gospel. Over time, our relationship has become mutual. We share our burdens with one another, point each other to Christ, and walk alongside each other during the difficult trials of life.

Silent Pain

The sad truth is, not everyone has such friends in their church body. There are many hearts crying out in silent pain within the church. As we sit in our pews each Sunday, surrounded by painted-on smiles and neatly pressed clothes, inside many are weeping. The issues may vary—grief, worry, shame, depression, fear, even severe mental illness—but each one needs the love and encouragement of others in the body of Christ. God uses us in the body to build up, spur on, encourage, and bless one another (Romans 12, Hebrews 3:13, 10:24-25, 13:1). In fact, the church body ought to be a place where people find help and healing, not where we simply voice our social media status face to face, providing updates on where we had lunch that week and the funny thing our child did the other day.

It is important that we recognize the fact that there are hurting people sitting next to us in our pews. We need to look beneath the masks and casual statements to see the hearts of each other. Because we are related to one another through the blood of Christ, each of us has the Spirit living within us. When we go beneath the surface and speak life-affirming words to the heart of another, it stirs the Spirit within them. It triggers hope within their soul. The love and encouragement from one believer to another is not the same as the world gives, for it is empowered by the Spirit himself.

May our churches be a place where the definition of friendship means something more than what it does online. May God open our eyes and hearts to see those among us who are hurting. And perhaps you already know of someone who needs help. Maybe you've wanted to reach out and help but don't know how. While by no means complete, this list provides a few ways you can love and encourage them.

1. Reach out: It may take time, but be intentional in letting that person know you care. Trust is something that has to be earned, but over time, they will open up and begin to share their burdens. Be sincere, genuine, and real.

2. Listen: Listen with ears of grace. Don't be like Job's friends who assumed they knew why Job was suffering. Enter their pain with them and listen. Don't try to come up with solutions to their problems. You are not responsible to take away their pain or make their life better. You are there to encourage and point them to the One who does take away all pain and sorrow.

3. Pray: Don't say, "I'm praying for you," and then not do it. Ask how you can pray for them and then commit to doing it. Consider writing a gospel-centered prayer and send it to them. I've received written prayers from friends, and it gave me great encouragement. Pray and ask God to give you wisdom and grace to encourage them.

4. Speak the gospel: You won't be able to solve their crisis or change their circumstances, but you can speak the hope of the gospel to their heart. We find true healing in the truths of the gospel. Remind them of who they are in Christ. Remind them of their standing before God, their inheritance, and what Christ has accomplished for them. Point them to the love their heavenly Father has for them, the very same love he has for the Son. And point them to the power of the Holy Spirit to work in and through them to live for Christ, despite their weakness. These gospel truths stand secure, no matter how strong the storm.

5. Check in: For some, the journey through pain is long and tedious. Stick it out with them. Check in often, even if they don't respond. Send a card, an email, a text. Leave encouraging messages to let them know you care and are praying for them. God will use your efforts. You may not see immediate fruit, but God is at work and will use your attempts to reach out to them, for their good and his glory.

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Thank you so much for the ESV Study Bibles to our Ugandan mission work in March of this year. We have had a partnership with a church body in Mbarara, Uganda for almost 5 years now. Each year we travel over and do pastoral conferences to train the local pastors in the Word of God, typically by selecting a book of the Bible and teaching through it verse-by-verse.

This year we decided to do something different. Instead of teaching them through a book of the Bible, we decided to equip them with resources, like your ESV Study Bibles, and to teach them how to use these resources to study God's Word for themselves. The results were astonishing. The Ugandan pastors and elders felt as if they had been given powerful weapons that none could defend against! In an area riddled with prosperity theology and Islam, these pastors are now infinitely better equipped to teach God's word to their people and to continue to send pastors out into the unreached people groups of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo.

Photos do not adequately reflect the amazement and wonder that was in the heart of each Ugandan as we told them of this gift. Hands trembled and tears fell as they received them. Together, we all used this biblical tool, teaching them how to use the maps, margins, notes, and cross-references, to study through the book of 1 Peter themselves. We believe this has equipped them to carry on with proper biblical exegesis long after the white American missionaries have left town! Thank you for supporting our church, their church, our mission, and God's Kingdom.

Rejoice with us over what God is doing around the world through our partners in mission, and please consider prayerfully these ways of co-laboring with us:

• Praise God with us that in April nearly 200 cases of resources went out to 22 countries.
• Plan for incorporating Packing Hope resources with your next missions engagement.
• Give to our current Relief Project, Piper's book, Finally Alive in English which will be very useful for many regions of the world.
• Read and subscribe to our monthly update.
• Become a monthly supporter of Theological Famine Relief for the Global Church.

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1. Cloning is a form of reproduction in which offspring result not from the chance union of egg and sperm (sexual reproduction) but from the deliberate replication of the genetic makeup of another single individual (asexual reproduction). Human cloning, therefore, is the asexual production of a new human organism that is, at all stages of human development, genetically virtually identical to a currently existing or previously existing human being.

2. Human cloning is achieved by a technique referred to as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The process involves introducing material from the nucleus of a human somatic cell (any biological cell forming the body of an organism, though for the purposes of SCNT, usually a skin cell) into an oocyte (a female egg cell that has not yet gone through the process to become an ovum) whose own nucleus has been removed or inactivated. The oocyte becomes an ovum that now no longer needs to be fertilized, because it contains the correct amount of genetic material. This new entity begins dividing and growing, yielding a cloned human embryo.

3. Cloning does not produce an exact genetic replica of the donor (the person the genetic material was taken from to produce the cloned embryo). All human cells, including eggs and sperm, contain small, energy-producing organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria contain a small piece of DNA that specifies the genetic instructions for making several essential mitochondrial proteins. SCNT transfers the nucleus into the oocyte which contains mitochondrial DNA of the egg donor. Just as in sexual reproduction, the embryo produced by cloning contains genetic material from two different individuals.

4. Due to missing, but crucial interactions between the sperm and egg, genetic reprogramming errors' are inherent to cloning. This leads to random, widespread genetic 'imprinting' and 'epigenetic' defects that are both known causes of cancer. In addition to the 'epigenetic' defects, cells derived from cloning that are injected back into the donor are rejected because of epigenetic mis-expression, genetic differences due to mitochondrial DNA, and the incompatibility of cells too immature in development to interact with adult tissue environments. This is the major stumbling block for using material from cloned embryos for the treatment of diseases.

5. The use of the terms therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning are misleading. All cloning produces a human embryo and is therefore reproductive in nature. The more accurate, neutral phrasing is cloning-to-produce-children and cloning-for-biomedical-research. These terms make a distinction between cloning that results in the creation of an embryo for subsequent destruction and one that is created in order to continue the normal process of human development.

6. The primary moral objection to cloning for research is that it creates human life solely for the purpose of destroying it; using a human embryo merely as a means to an end. In order to justify the killing of these human beings for their "spare parts", we have to ignore the scientific understanding what makes a member of the human species and argue on the metaphysical definition of what constitutes personhood.' While it is true that many people oppose the cloning of human embryos for valid religious and ethical reasons, the issue is not divided along the typical left/right political spectrum. Even pro-choice advocates and others who hold secular and/or progressive political views find sufficient ethical concerns for opposing the procedure. Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine and a bioethicist at the University of Chicago, told National Public Radio (NPR), "This is a case in which one is deliberately setting out to create a human being for the sole purpose of destroying that human being. I'm of the school that thinks that that's morally wrong no matter how much good could come of it."

7. Currently, the primary justification for therapeutic cloning is as a means of harvesting embryonic stem cells—a process that ends a human life—for research purposes. Despite years of media hype and billions of dollars dedicated to the venture, embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) has never produced any clinically proven therapies—and likely never will. As the Washington Post wrote earlier this week, "few experts think that production of stem cells through cloning is likely to be medically useful soon, or possibly ever." ESCR has been one of the most expensive boondoggles in biomedical history.

8. Cloning not only compounds the ethical concerns of ESCR but adds a significant number of other moral problems. This Machiavellian approach would be difficult to justify even if ESCR were to lead to miraculous cures. But research using harvested embryonic stem cells appears to be an unnecessarily speculative undertaking and a waste of money, life, and medical research. The use of adult stem cells, however, has none of the ethical problems and far fewer of the biomedical complications of ESCR. In fact, more than 70 types of therapies have been developed using adult stem cells.

9. As the President's Council on Bioethics explained in 2005,

The prospect of cloning-to-produce-children, which would be a radically new form of procreation, raises deep concerns about identity and individuality, the meaning of having children, the difference between procreation and manufacture, and the relationship between the generations. Cloning-for-biomedical-research also raises new questions about the manipulation of some human beings for the benefit of others, the freedom and value of biomedical inquiry, our obligation to heal the sick (and its limits), and the respect and protection owed to nascent human life. Moreover, the legislative debates over human cloning raise questions about the relationship between science and society, especially about whether society can or should exercise ethical and prudential control over biomedical technology and the conduct of biomedical research. Rarely has such a seemingly small innovation raised such large questions.

(Although the studies on cloning and ESCR produced by the President's Council on Bioethics were once available at Bioethics.gov, the Obama administration has removed all the work produced by the previous council.)

Recent posts in this series:

9 Things You Should Know About Mothers and Mother's Day

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood

9 Things You Should Know About the Boston Marathon Bombing

9 Things You Should Know About Female Body Image Issues

9 Things You Should Know About the Gosnell Infanticide and Murder Trial

9 Things You Should Know About Edith Schaeffer

9 Things You Should Know About Duck Dynasty

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Robert Louis Wilken is William R. Kenan professor emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity.

A good case can be made for the Muslim invasion of the Middle East in mid-seventh century, let us say AD 650. No event during the first millennium was more unexpected, more calamitous, and more consequential for Christianity than the rise of Islam. Few irruptions in history have transformed societies so completely and irrevocably as did the conquest and expansion of the Arabs in the seventh century. And none came with greater swiftness. Within a decade three major cities in the Byzantine Christian Empire—Damascus in 635, Jerusalem in 638, and Alexandria in 641—fell to the invaders. Most of the territories that were Christian in the year 700 are now Muslim. Nothing similar has happened to Islam. Christianity seems like a rain shower that soaks the earth and then moves on, whereas Islam appears more like a great lake that constantly overflows its banks to inundate new territory.

George Marsden is professor emeritus in history at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life.

I think it has to be the day that Constantine was converted to Christianity. That had huge effects both for good and for ill ever after.

Philip Jenkins is the distinguished professor of history and co-director for the program on historical studies of religion for the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is the author of of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died.

I would choose May 29, 1453, known throughout the Eastern churches as "the day the world ended." Although the Byzantine Empire by that point was a pale shadow of its former self, it was still a ghostly shadow of the Roman Empire, and the seat of the Orthodox Church that once dwarfed the Catholics in power and prestige. On that day, though, the Roman capital of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, beginning a period of long centuries when most Eastern Christians would survive under the grudging tolerance of Islamic rule. The event may be symbolic, but it still marks a decisive turning point in Christian history.

Thomas S. Kidd is professor of history at Baylor University. He is writing a biography of George Whitefield and previously published The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America.

On October 19, 1740, the First Great Awakening's most compelling preacher, George Whitefield, spoke at the church of the Great Awakening's most compelling theologian, Jonathan Edwards. This moment signaled the beginning of evangelicalism, the most dynamic movement in modern Christian history. Although Edwards and Whitefield did not always see eye-to-eye, they represented two aspects of evangelicalism at its best.

Edwards was the brilliant pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, whose writings on doctrine and revival are some of the most rigorous the church has ever seen. Whitefield took the gospel to the ends of the earth (which, for this English itinerant, meant America), generating unprecedented excitement through impassioned oratory and skillful use of media. While Edwards represented the evangelical mind, and Whitefield embodied evangelical action, both still appreciated the other's strength. Edwards itinerated, too, and oversaw two major revivals at his church, while Whitefield strongly promoted Calvinist doctrine and risked permanent schism with his Methodist ally John Wesley because of it.

Whitefield and Edwards seemed to sense the significance of the moment: the normally stoic Edwards wept through much of Whitefield's sermon. Edwards thought the Whitefield's revivals might herald "the dawning of a day of God's might, power, and glorious grace."

What question should we ask next? Send your suggestions to me at joe.carter@thegospelcoalition.org.

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