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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Counter-Cultural is Still Cultural

For the last several months, I have watched a new church building being built on the road to my house. Recently, the builders installed the church’s new sign, and I was a bit surprised. Perhaps the better word for my reaction was underwhelmed. In ...

Love the Church that Is

In a job like mine, you hear stories about the church. A student serving in their first church explains to me the conflict threatening to split his church. Of course, none of this was disclosed during the search and candidate process. A consultant...

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 Multiplication Mindset: The Ministry Paradigm Your Church may be Missing

Sometimes, we do not celebrate the most important things. It is like celebrating the kid who got the congeniality award instead of winning the pageant. Don’t get me wrong. We should give Miss Congeniality a pat on the back, but winning the congen...

Chiming in: "A church is not a random sampling of the place it is in"

Today I wanted to chime in on another good post by Justin Long. As an aside, if you are interested in missions and church planting, you need to follow Justin. You can find his blog here, and his Twitter account here. Justin recently posted a sh...

In the news: What you need to know about the Syrian refugee crisis

[caption id=”attachment_1092” align=”aligncenter” width=”4000”] Syrian refugees contained in Budapest[/caption] After my recent post on how you should care about the Syrian refugee crisis, I thought I would point out a few articles as an update. ...

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...

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