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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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 ...

A word of caution concerning "Relationship Evangelism"

I can remember  Monday night visitation at church. We would all meet up at the church building to pair up and take any visitor cards from the Sunday before and go visit the new families and share the gospel with them. In addition, it was standard ...

Chiming in: "The Unreached at Home"

Ashley Scarbrough with e3 Partners has a good write up concerning international people group work here in the US. She wrote the piece back in March, but I just stumbled across it recently. Ashley points out several different ways to find and inte...

A Mile in Their Shoes: People Group Catalyst

As a means of helping people see the various roles involved in people group discovery and engagement, I plan to periodically interview practitioners. These people will come from a variety of places (state conventions, sending agencies, research ...

In the News: "The end of suburban white flight"

“In the News” is a series where I highlight research and various articles from around the internet to showcase the shifts of missiological significance. If you read the last article, you saw that the Brookings institute had noted the shift of int...

Chiming in: "Geography, Ethnography and Missions" by Justin Long

I love finding good, brief articles like this recent post by Justin Long concerning people group work in the US. Justin is actually writing as a response to an article by JD Payne on the topic. Now, I want to highlight Justin’s post. The chain c...

How to be a Missionary Without Being a "Missionary"

A Hindu temple just outside of Raleigh, NC.  I don’t know anything about fill-in-the-blank culture! Can I even do this without some level of cultural expertise? This is perhaps the most frequent question when I share about reaching int...

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