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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Next Gen Goes to Church

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...

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...

Living at a "Seam of History"

In his book, Theology in the Context of World Christianity, Timothy Tennent makes a profound claim. He says the contemporary church is currently living at a “seam of history.” These seams have occurred at various moments in the history of the chur...

Four Truths to Ground Your Theology of Mission

As I wrote in my last post, studying missions is an important part of actually doing missions. There is a cognitive aspect to everything we do. Therefore, what we study about missions affects how we actually do missions. The Bible has a lot to say...

Bourdain Tastes the Nations... in Houston (VIDEO)

I love shows about strange food. Maybe it is because I love strange food. I like them even more when I can learn something from them, and this upcoming piece by Anthony Bourdain on CNN’s Parts Unknown is all about the radical diversity found in on...

Christian, Get Out of the Bubble

My church has a lot of seminary students, and I hear a certain refrain every two or three weeks in the small groups I oversee. The conversation turns toward evangelism and missions and some well-meaning seminary student will express frustration th...

A Snapshot Biblical Theology Of Missions

rea— layout: post title: “A Snapshot Biblical Theology of Missions” date: “2016-10-28” tags: “bible study” “missions” author: Meredith Cook featured: false hidden: false image: “https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1638817858379-9b126c57fe91?q=8...

Does your church have a family tree?

We replicate what we celebrate. Everyone knows, buried deep in our bones, is a desire to be more and do more of what we praise. Truthfully, the idea is at the heart of the gospel and our purpose as people created to worship. We become what we wor...

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