The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
“Is this the end of the church in America?” You have heard the question. Perhaps you have wondered yourself. I am sure you have read the articles like I have. It seems every few months something in the news cycle (or on the news cycle’s demented ...
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...
Cities today are big places. Let me put that into perspective. In the first century (when Paul was walking around), the biggest city in the world was supposedly Rome and it had… wait for it… 450,000 people.* The shining beacon of urban accomplishm...
In previous posts, we’ve talked about the need to be proactive instead of reactive concerning missions sending from your church. This means working in advance to cast vision, assess, and equip people from your own church to be international missio...
Today is an interesting time for global missions. In many ways, it is easier than ever for us to get to the nations. Consider that early missionaries would travel on a dirty ship for two months through storms to get to their field, and then ...
A talk given at Southeastern's GO Conference in 2016 on the rise of diaspora missions.
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...
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, ...
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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