Him We Proclaim

The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.

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Curious, Crystals, or Combative: Navigating the Nones

Few terms have captivated the missional imagination of the church in North America like the Nones. The term None became our shorthand for the nonreligious, or those who would not select any particular relgion on surveys about faith. This was a cha...

Boldness Beyond Sight: Rooting Mission in God's Word

I wonder if you think like I do. When I read through the gospels, I often wonder what it would have been like to walk alongside Jesus in the flesh. Even more, what would it have been like to walk alongside Jesus in his resurrected body? What was i...

Drawing Water from the Well

During my time serving overseas as a missionary, I lived in rural West Africa. Rustic doesn’t quite describe the living conditions. No electricity. No running water. That meant water had to come out of the ground, and it had to do so by hand. I h...

Live as though You Cannot Die

We live in an anxious age. If you don’t believe me, check out this book, or this article, or this article that even discusses a rise in anxiety before the pandemic, or this research. And if you don’t trust any of those sources, here’s Fox News say...

Let's Get Serious about Relationship Evangelism

This article has been a long time coming. If you are a long-time follower of my writing (and I mean long time), you may recall an article I wrote back in 2015 titled, “A Word of Caution Concerning ‘Relationship Evangelism’.” In that article, I wr...

Contextualization Can Be Risky Business

The opening scene of the movie, The African Queen, depicts a white missionary couple leading a worship service for residents of an African village. If you’ve seen the movie, you may or may not have noticed the oddities about this scene. This worsh...

In the news: Where immigrant growth matters most

Today, I want to draw your attention to another research article from the Brookings institute concerning migration in the United States. Notice I said migration, not immigration. Of course, this article deals with the latter, but there is more goi...

Christianity is a Dual Citizenship

“To be Susu is to be Muslim.” If I heard that once while serving in Africa as a missionary, I heard it a dozen times. Religion, culture, and identity are formative forces in people’s lives. These things wind around each other into a tightly braid...

Immigration may beat a century-old record

As of 2015, the United States had set one record in immigration, and it may be on pace to break another one. According to the most recent data from Pew research, the United States is now home to over 43.2 million international immigrants. That is...

A Japanese Perspective on American Christianity from 1926

His name was Kanzo Uchimura. Uchimura was a prominent Christian leader in Japan during the early part of the twentieth century. He was born in Japan during the end of the previous century to a prominent family. He grew up, as many of the Japanese...

In the News: My high school's Muslim prayer room was a lesson in religious freedom

I recently ran across an article in the news that I think you need to see. It comes to us from the Religion News Service and is certainly thought-provoking. The title, “My high school’s Muslim prayer room was a lesson in religious freedom,” is eye...

Hello, I’m Keelan.

I serve as the George Liele Director of the Center for Great Commission Studies and as a professor of Christian Missions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I also serve as Assistant Professor of Christian Missions at the seminary. Previously, I served as the Associate Director for the Union Baptist Association in Houston, TX.

My areas of focus cover both North American and International missions. I teach and write on church renewal and replanting as well as developing healthy sending culture in churches. I have a passion for mobilizing the church to the nations, and a love for missions history.

I lead the Peoples Next Door project, which is an initiative to equip local churches in North America to engage in cross-cultural missions among the least-reached peoples that now live in our communities. I’ve been a church planter in West Africa with the IMB and facilitated ethnographic research in Washington, DC with NAMB.

More about me