The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
When you crack a new book for the first time, as you leaf through the first two or three pages, you will usually notice a page with just a sentence or two nestled right into the center of it. On it, you will find someone’s name. It will not be the...
Great adventures need great transportation, and you, 15-passenger church van, taught youth groups everywhere what it meant to ride in style. Jason and his team of heroes had the Argo, the X-Men had their Blackbird, the A-Team had Baracus and his ...
I was in high school when I saw my first robo-baby. This probably dates me, but at the time, it was some new attempt at teaching girls in home economics about caring for a baby. (If you are older than me, you probably remember girls carrying an e...
I do not own a GPS. Furthermore, I do not want to own a GPS. I think they make me dumber. There is just something about plotting your own course that sharpens the navigational acumen. That being said, I got lost last week. During my marathon ex...
The moon was bright. It sat low in the sky and reflected off the still water of the lake, but the moon was not the source of light. A fire crackled and tiny embers danced away into the night sky. There was just enough light to make out the faces o...
An ancient fable relates the tale of a group of blind men upon their first encounter with an elephant. Having heard of an elephant before but not knowing anything about them, these men are given the opportunity to feel the creature in order to kno...
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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