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...

One big story

The Bible is not a book of rules, although many treat it as such. It is also not a book of heroes recounting the dashing deeds and heroic adventures of great men. No, truth be told, the prominent figures usually fail. Certainly, the Bible contain...

Guilty until Proven Innocent, but That is Not a Bad Thing

Today I’m posting another one from the archives. I wrote this one back in 2012. I find it ironically fitting, considering the current state of the presidential race and a lot of the rhetoric floating around in the political arena right now. I hope...

A living Hope

Life sucks sometimes. We all know it is true. You get passed up for a promotion, or perhaps you get fired. Someone in your family becomes terribly sick, or perhaps you do. You find out the girl of your dreams does not feel the same way about you,...

On Letting Go

I am a dreamer. God blessed me with a vivid imagine. As a child, that took the shape of me dressing up in costumes and running around fighting crime in a world I had created in my mind. As an adult, I find my imagination no less vivid. However, I...

On holiness - Part 2

For several weeks, my posts have revolved around the pursuit of holiness. We looked at several misunderstandings of the term “holiness” when we discussed self-help theology and legalism. Last week, we talked about how the Bible uses the term “holi...

On holiness - Part 1

One of my earliest memories of childhood is a painting that hung on the wall in my grandparent’s living room. The painting was a fox hunt, and it was rather large. The scene detailed a vast stretch of fields and tree lines boxed in by fence rows....

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