Him We Proclaim

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

Featured

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...

Reflecting on 100 Years of Cooperation

I’m presently making last-minute travel arrangements to head to Dallas at the end of the week. This year marks my 11th year in a row attending the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting. It’s my 13th meeting in total. Yes, I go because of my...

Gospel Saturation Requires Ministry Multiplication

Language matters, but language without substance is just rhetoric. The last two decades in church ministry have seen an impressive shift in the way we speak about the mission of the church. We’ve adopted a language of multiplication. And with thi...

The Art of the Personal Testimony

I recently stumbled across an article at The Gospel Coalition that caught my attention. The article, titled “The Increasing Value of Christian Testimonies”, resonated. In fact, I make similar claims in my Christian missions courses at the seminary...

Seven Missionary Biographies and Why You Should Read One Now

I initially pulled this book list together during the pandemic a few years ago. Back then, all kinds of posts were appearing that recommended book lists for people to consider during our global shut-in. I even wrote one suggesting you use this ...

An Appeal to Young Southern Baptists

I wrote this post right after the SBC annual meeting in St. Louis, two years ago. I couldn’t help but return to it today. The events of the last couple of days are weighing heavy on my heart, and I feel these words are more true now than ever bef...

Church Community Has an Outward Focus Too

The following is a guest post by Marie McDonald. Marie has written here before and does excellent work in her local church leading others to discover and engage people groups. Think for a moment about Christian community. Typically, the term conj...

Covenant Membership is a Contextual Process

Monday, I ran a guest post by Trevor King on the importance of covenant membership, and I highly recommend you read it here. In it, Trevor makes a compelling claim about the biblical nature of a covenant membership process for local churches, and ...

7 Reasons for Covenant Church Membership

In Ephesians, Paul writes, “So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornersto...

Communicating across cultures is hard, but it is not impossible.

If you have ever preached on a short-term mission trip, then you know the feeling. You are up front, a bunch of unfamiliar faces staring back at you. Next to you stands your interpreter, awaiting your words so he or she can translate them into th...

How to Know if Your Church is Missional

The term missional is overused. It happens a lot with new words that are initially helpful. We see the word as clearly describing some admirable trait and we adopt the word, but the meaning starts to expand. People continue placing it as a label ...

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