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...

Free Resource: Assess Your Church from Multiple Perspectives

The following is an excerpt from a free local church resource. The resource is a quick reference for carefully examining your local church in its missions context. You can download the resource at the end of the post. “The gospel never fits prope...

Four Online Resources for Demographics on Your Community

Do you have any good websites I can visit for demographic data on my neighborhood? If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve received it a dozen times. And for what it is worth, it’s a good question. Nowadays, many pastors and church leaders un...

A Thank You to Pastors (And an Encouragement to Their Members)

Life has been full of changes for us in the last year and lately I’ve been reflecting on the Lord’s faithfulness in our lives: helping us feel at home in Houston, giving us a church and friends, and simply helping us to like where we are and what ...

"Gospel-centered" Must Mean More Than the Preaching

“A gospel-centered church is not one where the preacher preaches the gospel, but where the people share the gospel.” ~John Meador A couple of weeks ago, I commented on an article at Christianity Today by John Meador of First Baptist Euless, T...

Chiming In: The Story of One Texas Church's Road to Evangelism

Every now and then, I have an article on the internet reach out and slap me in the face. Today it was in a good way, and I wanted to share it with you. It is an article at Christianity Today by John Meador, pastor of First Baptist Euless, TX. In ...

Falling into the Gambler's Fallacy in Church Ministry

I fell for it every year. When I was growing up in my small hometown, the biggest week or the year was when the regional fair came to town. Our Rotary park would fill with rides, blinking lights, and the midway. Everyone in the county would make t...

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