The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
“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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
David Roberts, a blogger at Vox.com recently wrote an article titled, “How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult.” For a secular piece, Roberts is rather prophetic in his tone about the shape of society and its relationship wit...
Does your neighborhood look different than your church membership? If so, your church is not the only one. Countless churches across the United States look up one day to realize that the neighborhood around them has completely changed. All of...
This blog is actually several years older than its most recent launch as The Peoples Next Door. I initially started this blog when I was serving in West Africa, and this week I began digging through the archives. Back in 2012, I wrote a piece t...
Let me start by saying this is an oversimplification. Culture and worldview are complicated topics. Are they the same thing? Are they distinct? Search five textbooks and you will get five different answers and five different definitions. In fac...
I was a missionary in West Africa. By the time I left that continent, I understood (to a decent degree) the culture, worldview, and language of the people I was engaging. I could carry on conversations, share the gospel, even teach Bible studies. ...
This is not a new article (it came out in 2013), but Christianity Today engages with some data published by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell. The article is titled, “The Craziest Statistic You’ll Read About North A...
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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