The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
Our world is not as it seems. We go through our days, worrying about the present circumstances, one eye on our social feed and the day’s news cycle. Inevitably, there is another political controversy. Someone of notoriety that you’ve vaguely heard...
“Is this the end of the church in America?” You have heard the question. Perhaps you have wondered yourself. I am sure you have read the articles like I have. It seems every few months something in the news cycle (or on the news cycle’s demented ...
It’s been called a “quiet revival,” or the “revival generation.”1 Perhaps we now have numerical evidence to back up that experience. It appears Next Gen is showing up for church. More than that, they’re now showing up more than their older counte...
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...
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...
Last year about this time, the BBC created an excellent interactive educational tool to help people experience some of the struggles involved in refugee migration to Europe. If you’ve not played with, I would suggest doing so. You can find it here...
Acts 17:16-34 gets a lot of love. In my brief existence, I have heard it used as justification for all kinds of things. Growing up in my extra-conservative church as a young boy, I heard preachers use Paul’s indignation at the culture in Athens as...
A little over a week ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “Rural America Is the New ‘Inner City’.” As the title suggests, the article is a feature piece that does a winsome job telling the narrative of urban renewal and rural ...
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...
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...
“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...
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.
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