The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
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...
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...
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...
Ministry happens in the medium of culture. In fact, all of life does. Some have compared culture to the air we walk through and breath every day. For this reason, we love talking about “engaging culture.” Some question whether we should concern ou...
“The gospel never fits properly within a culture.” That is a quote by Ed Stetzer from a chapter in The Mission of Today’s Church. In the chapter, Stetzer is detailing the plight of Southern Baptist churches in relation to the North American missi...
Adult Americans have a real hard time making friends, at least that is what most recent research claims). There are reasons. Interpersonally speaking, our lifestyle choices have hemmed us in. The shift in America toward single-family housing, the ...
You think back to that time often. Maybe it was a decade ago, maybe a generation ago, or maybe it was just a few years ago. It was an exciting time in the life of your church. The sanctuary was full on a Sunday morning, children were running aroun...
Last week, I shared a simple method for using Google’s free services for neighborhood discovery. Today, I want to extend that idea to the next level. Many churches never consider mapping out their own membership, but they should. Our homes are st...
It is an interesting time when the Huffington Post beats many churches to principles of Christian hospitality, but that is precisely what has happened in a recent article they published called, “99% of Immigrants Feel More Welcome After a Dinner.”...
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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