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 ...

A Mile in Their Shoes: Peoples Next Door team leader in a local church

The next interview in our series is a team leader for people group engagement in a local church. Marie works in a local church in the Raleigh area, mobilizing others to reach the West African Muslims that live around the church. Marie is not churc...

Here's a fun way to understand people group communities

I talk a lot about people group communities or people group pockets forming in cities here in the US. In short, as migration continues around the US, many of these people groups moving to here will find a way to locate in the same areas. They form...

A word of caution concerning "Relationship Evangelism"

I recently posted a new article that finished this conversation about relationship evangelism. In this article, I raise some concerns about poorly adopting this practice. In the next article, I lay out what I consider a healtheir philosophy of rel...

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

[!note] Note: 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 agen...

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...

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