The online home for the writings of Keelan Cook. A website for those who love the church and its mission.
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...
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...
I’m presently making last-minute travel arrangements to head to Dallas at the end of the week. This year marks my 11th year in a row attending the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting. It’s my 13th meeting in total. Yes, I go because of my...
For the Christian, the question is not if we will suffer but when. Of course, that statement is contingent upon the kind of lifestyle we choose to live. Perhaps a better way to say that is the Christian who lives as the Bible tells a Christian to...
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Missions is changing. We need to keep up too. Too many of our traditional, American evangelical churches have a static understanding of the Great Commission, especially when it comes to missions. We nee...
Last year about this time, the BBC created an excellent interactive educational tool to help people experience some of the struggles involved in refugee migration to Europe. If you’ve not played with, I would suggest doing so. You can find it here...
Acts 17:16-34 gets a lot of love. In my brief existence, I have heard it used as justification for all kinds of things. Growing up in my extra-conservative church as a young boy, I heard preachers use Paul’s indignation at the culture in Athens as...
A little over a week ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “Rural America Is the New ‘Inner City’.” As the title suggests, the article is a feature piece that does a winsome job telling the narrative of urban renewal and rural ...
The opening scene of the movie, The African Queen, depicts a white missionary couple leading a worship service for residents of an African village. If you’ve seen the movie, you may or may not have noticed the oddities about this scene. This worsh...
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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