Him We Proclaim

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

Featured

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...

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...

Missions is Changing

A talk given at Southeastern's GO Conference in 2016 on the rise of diaspora missions.

Look for These People When Trying to Engage a People Group

  Reaching out across cultural barriers to engage internationals in the States is a daunting prospect for many local church members. They are unsure of culture and know little about the customs of their new neighbors. Furthermore, they (rightly...

Anyone Can Learn These Three Phrases in Another Language

It has been five years now, but I still remember how it felt. It happened more than once while I served in West Africa as a missionary, but it always caught me off guard. I would be working out in the bush, a long long way from anyone that could, ...

Christian: Going to Church is Important, Your Understanding of the Bible Depends on It

I recently picked up a book by the late, great missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, entitled Truth and Authority in Modernity. In the work, he tries to untangle the often confusing conversation concerning the issues of authority in worldview. I do not...

How to Survive the Church as an Introvert

Periodically, I post articles written by others. The following is a guest post that may serve as a good dose of medicine if you find the church to be a little overwhelming at times. Enjoy! By: Meredith Cook If you register “I” on the spectrum of...

I'll Be Home for Christmas, But Many Will Not

In just a few hours I will be hitting the road for Tennessee. This morning, the local news in Raleigh said the security line at the airport was so long it went outside the building and around the corner. It is Christmastime, and that means it is t...

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