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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Next Gen Goes to Church

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...

Curious, Crystals, or Combative: Navigating the Nones

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...

Boldness Beyond Sight: Rooting Mission in God's Word

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...

Drawing Water from the Well

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...

Live as though You Cannot Die

We live in an anxious age. If you don’t believe me, check out this book, or this article, or this article that even discusses a rise in anxiety before the pandemic, or this research. And if you don’t trust any of those sources, here’s Fox News say...

A Right to Secrecy

The basic American right to privacy. It is a thing, right? Most people do not realize a “right to privacy” is not explicitly stated anywhere in the constitution. However, despite the absence of those words from the document, our country (at least...

Off Topic: Hyper-Abbreviation (a manual)

Language is dynamic. Take any linguistics course, and the ever-changing nature of language is one of the first things you learn. Over time, words morph and change into completely new animals. This is why Charles Spurgeon frequently referred to Go...

On the disappearance of Zion

Things change. We know this to be true. Live long enough, and you see the world around you adjust and evolve. It is a fact of life. Some things appear to always push forward, like technology. While other things seem to move in circles, like fashi...

Chasing rainbows

If you are questioning man’s depravity lately, might I suggest you cut on your television. This weekend, I visited a friend in Richmond and was sitting on his couch before church. The television was on the National Geographic channel, and I notic...

Marriage: "What's in it for me?"

If you ever want to feel awkward, try preaching a wedding as a single guy. That will just about do it. A few months ago, I received a call from an old college student of mine. He and his fiancée (also a past student of mine) were getting married...

The Great Debate: The Nature of Jesus

This post is a continuation from a previous post. For the whole story, read On debating an imam.   Christianity is not about a religion, or a philosophy, or a worldview; it is about a person. For centuries men have been beaten, persecuted, tortu...

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