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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Make it Easy for Your Members to Tell Their Mission Trip Story

“I have no idea how to explain this!” I hear those words frequently from our students. At Southeastern, we take over a dozen short-term mission trips a year all over the world. This results in over a hundred of our students every year traveling t...

Go Deep: Moving Beyond the Surface in Evangelism

I recently spoke to several hundred students at a conference on the importance of evangelism. During my time with those students, I asked them all a simple question: Has there ever been a time when you felt like you should tell someone about Jesus...

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...

Five Local Church Benefits from Creating a Global Missions Partnership

Sending global missionaries is one of my favorite topics of conversation with pastors and church leaders. Having been an international missionary myself, it always does my heart good when a pastor or church leader starts asking questions about how...

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 ...

Missions in Paris, It's Not What You Think

I have heard it a dozen times over the last couple of months: “Oh, you’re going to Paris on a mission trip! Man, that must be nice! You’re really suffering for Jesus!” I completely get the sentiment behind these jokes. After all, Paris is one of ...

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...

Languages Are More Important Than You Think

Languages are fascinating. For all of you who endured through Spanish or French in high school, you may disagree with me, but there is a reason that we take foreign languages in school. Language is a fundamental part of being human. It is one of ...

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...

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