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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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...

Let's Get Serious about Relationship Evangelism

This article has been a long time coming. If you are a long-time follower of my writing (and I mean long time), you may recall an article I wrote back in 2015 titled, “A Word of Caution Concerning ‘Relationship Evangelism’.” In that article, I wr...

In the midst of Hurricane Harvey

9,000,000,000,000 gallons. That’s how much water dumped onto Houston two nights ago. The number is even higher now, as the rains have not ceased. For an idea of just how much water that is, check out the Washington Post article. It gives an illus...

Here's a Big List of Refugee Processing Centers Across the US

I am thankful to see the swelling interest by local churches in caring for refugees. Nowadays, I regularly get asked questions about how to begin this vital ministry at your church. Today, I simply wanted to share a resource with you that may help...

Condescension Poisons the Mission

In the last week, a flurry of articles have chimed in on the situation in Charlottesville or on the current cultural temperature that it lays bare. I wrote on Monday of how this attitude affected our local missions over 100 years ago. Today, thou...

Does our attitude need to be changed? Thoughts after Charlottesville.

I have a lot swirling around in my head this morning. I spent this past week compiling a research project and writing an academic article on missionary methods to immigrants around the turn of the nineteenth century. Sounds boring, I know. But if...

American churches, we have been here before with immigration.

For a number of years now the representatives of our foreign missionary societies have been crying with a loud voice for the best talent of America to go into foreign lands. Their cry has been heard, and each year the choicest best-trained youn...

Nearsighted churches vs. farsighted churches

Eyeballs are fascinating. They take in all of this information around us and translate it into a vision that is meaningful. They give us the information we need to see the road ahead and watch out for hazards. They interpret our surroundings and s...

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