The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
[!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” 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...
I love finding good, brief articles like this recent post by Justin Long concerning people group work in the US. Justin is actually writing as a response to an article by JD Payne on the topic. Now, I want to highlight Justin’s post. The chain c...
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” At least, that’s what people say. For the last couple of years, Southeastern Seminary has worked on our Peoples Next Door project. Peoples Next Door exists to help train and equip local churches to discover...
A Hindu temple just outside of Raleigh, NC. I don’t know anything about fill-in-the-blank culture! Can I even do this without some level of cultural expertise? This is perhaps the most frequent question when I share about reaching int...
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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