Mastodawn

Enjoying some fresh beans this morning straight from the international field. Home grown, locally roasted in Indonesia. Unlike anything I can find in the States.

One of the perks of traveling to the field all the time.

Keelan Cook 20h ago

The great Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones noted a main cause of the Church's ill state: the devil is being forgotten. We attribute all to psychology, ignorant of the objective fact of a personal, real adversary. This spiritual amnesia is dangerous.
https://keelancook.com/on-knowing-the-enemy #spiritualwarfare #churchleadership #theology

#SpiritualWarfare #leadership #theology #missiology #Bible

On Knowing the Enemy – Keelan Cook

Have we forgotten the devil? The great Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote about this very issue: I am certain that one of the main causes of the ill state of the Church today is the fact that the devil is being forgotten. All is attributed to us; we have all become so psychological in our attitude and thinking. We are ignorant of this great objective fact, that being, the existence of the devil, the adversary, the accuser, and his “fiery darts”.1 I’m inclined to agree with his assertion. The last couple of months, I’ve been reflecting on Ephesians 6. According to Paul, we are presently fighting an invisible battle. It is one which requires a level of spiritual readiness in wartime. I am not certain the root cause of this spiritual amnesia concerning our foe. Perhaps we are too sophisticated now to believe in such superstitious things. Nevertheless, Paul is correct; the devil is real. This is a personal devil. I do not mean personal in the sense of your very own devil or a private devil that belongs just to you. He is personal in the sense that he has a personality. He is a real person. This devil is not an anthropomorphism for feelings, emotions, or psychology. The devil is not some metaphor for karma or coincidence or conflict. Though, he may very likely use any of the above in his schemes against you. He is the accuser of the brethren, the liar, a roaring lion who prowls about seeking whom he may devour. He’s also not alone. In verse 12 of this chapter, Paul claims we fight “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.” Demonic forces sound old fashioned. It feels a bit superstitious. Yet, we must not allow our modern biases to soften this text. The devil is real, and he commands a host of enemies intent to destroy. And, Paul does more than out the enemy’s identity here in this passage. He provides crucial intel for our battle. We are keyed in to the devil’s schemes in order to stand against him and his forces waging war on Christ’s church. Paul is clear: our enemy is not flesh and blood, but he is active and powerful, and he is a master of misdirection. Your enemy is not flesh and blood Your enemy is not flesh and blood. Paul could not be more clear about this in verse 12. So, the Bible tells us we are not fighting against people. Why? Because the struggle is not this-wordly. If our struggle was social, Paul would have us put on social armor. If our struggle was intellectual, he would have us put on enlightenment armor. If our struggle was political, he would have us put on political armor. If our struggle was physical, he would have us put on physical armor. In this passage, Paul calls us to none of those things. He calls us to take up the spiritual armor of God against a personal enemy and his legion of forces. People are not the enemy. Society at large is not the enemy. Other political parties, or the people in them, are not the enemy. It is so easy to get this mixed up today. Scott Pace, our provost at Southeastern, asks the question: “Are you more bothered by lost people or burdened for them?” Especially in a world that is antagonistic to the people of God, we can treat lost people as our enemy instead of seeing them as they really are: hostages of the enemy, enslaved and blinded by their sin. When we see them as they truly are, and we realize who the real enemy is, we discover we are on a rescue mission. God wants to set those captives free, just like He’s done for you and me. But, Your Enemy is Active and He is Powerful Your enemy is not flesh and blood, but your enemy is active, and he is powerful. We can be so trained in on the wrong enemy today that we stay mired in conflict over all kinds of things. We bury down in the trenches for some kind of culture war. Firing our shots at the wrong targets. All the while, the real enemy has us in his sights off to the side, and he’s picking us off. Week after week, we sit silent not sharing the gospel message with friends, coworkers, family, neighbors, acquaintances, or the person in the grocery store. The enemy is picking us off. We cannot go a week without reading another article about someone in ministry leadership, or hearing another story of someone in one of our churches who committed moral failure. The enemy is picking us off. He’s destroying our churches. He’s destroying our families. He’s destroying our lives. He’s destroying our witness and our ability to testify to the gospel of Christ. He’s doing it from the inside. He is active and he is powerful. And he’s prowling around seeking to destroy us, and we’ve got our eyes on his decoy. Paul declares here in Ephesians 6, we must know the enemy. And, He is a Master of Misdirection Our enemy schemes. This enemy is quite skilled at misdirection. The smoke screen comes in many forms, two of which I’ll mention here. First, this enemy is easy to underestimate. Underestimating your enemy is dangerous. On the sports field, that leads to an upset. Teams get too confident, and they don’t prepare. They rest in their own ability, they are unconcerned about learning the other team’s plays. On the battlefield, underestimating your enemy is one way to get yourself killed. We are tempted that we do not need our full complement of arms. But there are few worse ideas than bringing a knife to a gun fight. In Acts 19 we see one example of some itinerant Jewish exorcists (I didn’t know that was a job until I read it in Acts) who make the mistake of battling demons without fully understanding the power needed to do so. They leave that encounter running away, physically beaten up, and not wearing any pants. You can go look it up. It actually happened in Ephesus, the same place Paul is writing this letter to. Perhaps his audience remembered the incident. If underestimating your enemy is dangerous, misidentifying your enemy is worse. When you misidentify your enemy, you aim at targets that are not your enemy and leave yourself defenseless to your real enemy. It is a very dangerous place to be. This is likely our more common mistake today. We must realize demons will use whatever tactics go unnoticed. Causing us to feel as though demonic forces are an outmoded superstition, a relic that no longer applies, is a convenient way to go unnoticed. The issue may not be that they are no longer active, but that we have lost our eyes to see. As Lloyd-Jones notes, a crucial tactic of evil spiritual forces would be to cause us to forget the devil and to think our enemy was other people instead of the demonic forces themselves. In our invisible battle with this dangerous enemy and his dark, spiritual forces, Paul gives his reader great comfort. We are given God’s very own armor so that we may stand. In order to stand, we cannot take our eyes off the enemy. We must remember who we are fighting at all times. Martyn Lloyd Jones, The Christian Warfare, An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10–13 (Banner of Truth, 1976), 292. ↩

Keelan Cook 1d ago

The aging of our population is a broader trend across the United States, with areas like North Carolina seeing explosive growth in retirement-age inmigration. This demographic shift profoundly matters for how we pursue the Great Commission in local church ministry and missions. Are our strategies keeping pace? #missiology #churchleadership #Demographics #GreatCommission
https://keelancook.com/great-commission-post-retirement

#missiology #leadership #GreatCommission #demographics #strategy

The Great Commission Post-Retirement – Keelan Cook

A couple of months ago, I made the mistake of posting an off-handed comment on Facebook. The next thing I knew, I was in meetings with some folk from our state convention in North Carolina talking missions strategy about that off-handed comment. Here is the gist of it: North Carolina is getting older and more diverse, and that matters for the Great Commission. And the more I’ve looked into this demography shift, the more I realize it really matters for the sake of the Great Commission. Shifting Demographics North Carolina is a rapidly growing state. If you’re local to the state, that’s likely no surprise to you, but for the uninitiated, it’s one of the faster growing regions in the United States. Estimates from Carolina Demography project a population over 12 million by 2035. That’s a far cry from where the state was a couple of decades ago. Of course, North Carolina is home to several trendy areas for young professionals. Charlotte and Raleigh are both epicenters for job creation right now. So, it’s a common assumption by many that our growth is fueled by college-age or young professionals streaming into the area hoping for their big break. And that is happening, but it’s not actually the biggest contributor to population growth in these metros, especially the Raleigh metro that I call home. So, what is our biggest demographic of incoming residents? Retirement age adults. Yep, you read that right. Look at some graphs with me. The light blue bars are the percentage population in NC in 2011 by age group. The dark blue bars are 2021. Notice that all categories are going down, except the last two. The percentage of the population that is over 65 has increased, while all other categories have declined in overall share. The next graph makes the point even more explicit. The above graph demonstrates which age groups have grown in North Carolina over the past decade. See those last two age groups. That is massive increase. In fact, this last graph shows us the reality of the situation. Take a look at the map above. You’d be tempted to misread this data by assuming the dark blue counties are the ones seeing growth in the post-retirement age group. However, any county shaded blue experienced a growth of at least five percent in that age range. That’s every single county. Every county in North Carolina saw a marked increase in people over the age of 65. What about those dark blue counties? Those saw an increase of up to fifty percent. That’s insane population shifts. The aging of our population in North Carolina is actually a broader trend across the United States. It’s not just happening in North Carolina, but it’s especially happening in North Carolina. Let me explain why. There are two primary drivers of a age shift in population like this. This first is the most obvious, and what is happening across the United States. People are living longer, and young people are having less children. That means more people stick around at the top end of the age groups and less people wind up in the bottom side of the age groups. That ages a population over time. However, North Carolina is experiencing growth for another reason: inmigration. While all areas are seeing the aging shift mentioned above, some areas are also magnets for people moving from other areas. This has long been the case for North Carolina’s metro areas. However, the assumption is that this immigration is a bunch of young professionals looking for that big career move. But our largest population swell is coming not from young professionals moving into hipster neighborhoods in downtown (or suburban facsimilies of these). Instead, it’s retirement-age families moving down from the Northeastern United States, not quite to Florida. Raleigh proves the case. In July of this year, Axios reported that the Triangle is one of the country’s hottest spots for retirees since the pandemic. The article highlights the unprecedented growth in post-retirement population in the Raleigh metro (+18.3%), but notes that this trend is occurring in several major metros across the country like Austin (+17.3) and Houston (+15.3%). Below is a graph from that Axios article about retirement-age inmigration to Raleigh. That is explosive growth in the 65+ population. And you can see it, too. Right next to my neighborhood is a new subdivision with at least 250 homes. Ironically enough, it is an age-gated community. You cannot move into the neighborhood unless you are over 55. The Great Commission in an Aging Community Now, if you’re a pastor, ministry leader, or someone just interested in the Great Commission, that bit of news means something for local church ministry and missions. So many of our efforts in church planting and ministry outreach generally are aimed at young families. Everyone knows the secret to a successful church plant is a rocking kids ministry, right? Well, what happens when the average age of your new neighbors in that recent subdivision is closer to 65 than 25? I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw that Axios article, and there are at least two shifts we need to make concerning the Great Commission in an aging community. Reframe Assumptions Concerning an Aging Population Ministering to a retirement-age population does not only mean taking care of people who can no longer take care of themselves. Many do face increasing challenges, both physically and financially, as they reach retirement-age. This creates both a responsibility and opportunity the church can meet. However, a growing number of people over the age of 65 are in decent health and have some financial means. Many of them are considering a “second career,” or what it means to have 10-15 years left in front of them to fill. Retirement is a natural chapter change in life, but it doesn’t mean a change to convalescence for many. Ironically enough, this may mean an increasing number of people aging out of the workforce are at the same spot, at least in some ways, as those exiting college and getting ready to enter the workforce. They have a new chapter in front of them, and they are looking for ways to use that time. If that’s true, it means we need to adjust our aim in a lot of our missional efforts. Reframe Missional Engagement to Consider Those at Retirement Age Most churches think of missional engagement as something we do among younger population segments, but we must consider retirement-age segments as a target for mobilization and engagement. Concerning mobilization, there is a chance your church has some folk closing in on retirement who are wondering what they will do after that last day at work. Why not shepherd them to steward that time well? What would it look like to mobilize these people for a “second career” in gospel ministry? That may not be a full time job, or a paid staff position at a church, but it could be. It could even mean taking an assignment with the International Mission Board in their Masters Program, which is designed specifically for people over the age of 55. In a recent article, John Piper said it this way, … the Bible has no conception of what Americans typically think of as retirement — that is, working for forty or fifty years and then playing for fifteen or twenty years: fishing, golfing, shuffleboard, pickleball, yard work, travel, hobbies, bucket lists, as if heaven was supposed to begin at 65 rather than death. We need to capture this moment in the lives of our more seasoned saints. There are so many opportunities for local missional engagement. Who ever thinks to ask a retiring couple to be a part of that new church plant across town? What if these people became our best tools in church renewal work by being key workers in a replant or revitalization? And I’ve already mentioned the potential for global sending. Instead of buying that RV and hopping tourist parks along the Eastern seaboard, what if we challenged our retiring families to pack up their bags and head to the nations? But, mobilizing post-retirement church members is only half of the equation. They also need to be the object of outreach and gospel ministry. If your church is in an area where this demographic trend is taking place, then you need to consider that engaging your community likely means more than targeting young families. Has your staff ever asked the question of how they will engage retired newcomers to their community? If not, it may be time to start.

Keelan Cook 1d ago

Many churches desire healthy overseas missions engagement but don't know where to start. This guide offers four essential questions to help your church establish its first robust international partnership, moving from aspiration to action.
https://keelancook.com/four-questions-to-guide-creating-a-global-missions-partnership

#missions #missiology #leadership #missions

Four Questions to Guide Creating a Global Missions Partnership – Keelan Cook

In my last article, I covered several important benefits for a local church entering into a global missions partnership with a missionary team overseas. Feel free to start there if you’d like. To be honest, when I first arrived in Houston, I quickly became convinced many of the churches in Houston cared little about international missions. The conversation here in town has been loudly directed toward local church planting within the Houston metro, as opposed to sending planters to other places in the US or sending missionaries to plant churches among unreached peoples. While I’ve been very encouraged by the attention given to local church planting, this led me to make an unfortunate assumption, namely that global missions was low on the list of priorities for our churches. Much to my surprise, this is far from the truth. When I started floating the idea of an intentional equipping in our own churches specifically for sending to the nations, I repeatedly heard encouragement. In fact, more than once, I was told church leaders had been hoping for just this kind of thing, not really knowing where to find it. And then came the questions. Church leaders began to start asking about the ways they could get their churches involved in global missions partnerships. With little direct connection to specific missionaries, churches often don’t know where to start. If you find your church in a similar position—having a desire to begin healthy overseas missions engagement and not knowing where to start—then here are four questions to help guide you to your first healthy international partnership. Do we already have missionaries on the field? The first place for any church to turn when it comes to international missions partnerships is their own membership. If a church has members, or past members, on the field serving with a missionary team, entering into partnership with their ongoing work is an excellent way to support them and involve the broader church in a missions vision. Sending missionaries well requires supporting those you send. If a church is intentional about sending, then it actively looks for those inside its own congregation who should be equipped and sent into Great Commission tasks. Then, it supports those it sends with ongoing care and partnership. It’s never too late to establish a partnership with those who have left your church to spread the gospel overseas. Do other local churches in our association have partnerships? Many churches do not have sent ones on the field with a prior connection to their church. In this case, looking to other nearby churches with a partnership is often a great start. In my role at the association where I serve, my hope is to establish many such cooperative relationships between churches in our association to partner with specific missionary teams on the field sent out of churches in our association. There are great benefits from partnering with missionaries overseas sent by a sister church in your same city or county. These churches can work together to plan trips to engage in the work and support the missionary efforts. This is especially helpful for normative size churches that may need to pool volunteers with another church to form a short term team. In addition, when the missionaries are stateside, they are local to your area and can also spend time in fellowship and reporting with your church as well. Churches can plan joint events where they pray for and care for the missionary team together, and their proximity allows them to make all of these plans easily. What agencies are we already supporting? In addition to looking toward other churches in your local network or association, a church seeking their first missionary partnership should consider agencies they are already supporting. It surprises me how many conversations I have with pastors and church leaders in which they are unaware that they are already financially supporting an international missions agency by virtue of their cooperation in our denomination. A young church planter in our association recently returned from his church’s first trip to visit an international missionary in South Asia. Upon returning, the team was convicted that a partnership with the ongoing work there would be an important part of their church’s mission. A new, small church plant, the pastor was telling me they knew they would need to send people from their church long term, but he was concerned about how they would fund such an endeavor. What I told him next floored him. Their church was already funding the missionaries they would send! Furthermore, they were already financially supporting the missionary team they had visited in South Asia. As a part of the SBC, his church was working with an IMB missionary, an agency they were already cooperatively supporting, and the agency they would use to send any missionaries they sent. One of the great benefits of cooperative sending with the IMB is the fact that missionary support is taken care of through the cooperative funding program. The funding dilemma was already solved. Their small church already had it’s financial support mechanism in place and didn’t know. If you happen to be an SBC church that does support the Cooperative Program, I would highly encourage you to consider a partnership with IMB missionaries on the field. You already financially support them, and working with the structures you already support will allow you to lean into future sending as well. What people groups are we engaging locally? Finally, consider the local opportunities for cross-cultural engagement right around you. A number of churches are already involved in some form of refugee ministry in their own city. Others are actively engaged in cross-cultural ministry of other types with local immigrants. This is often a good place to start when considering potential partnerships overseas. Connecting your work with local unreached groups of Hindu or Muslim background peoples with an international missions partnership to those same areas overseas can produce a really healthy missions vision for your church. For instance, here in Houston we have over 75,000 Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Many of these people are completely unreached with the gospel, and gospel ministry is perhaps even more pressing back in their home country. A local church can work to reach them both here and there with wise partnerships overseas and active gospel-centered engagement here in town. Further Reading

Keelan Cook 1d ago

Partnering directly with a missionary team on the field provides many significant benefits for a local church that cares about reaching the nations with the gospel.
https://keelancook.com/five-local-church-benefits-from-creating-a-global-missions-partnership

#missiology #missions #leadership #GreatCommission #ministry

Five Local Church Benefits from Creating a Global Missions Partnership – Keelan Cook

Sending global missionaries is one of my favorite topics of conversation with pastors and church leaders. Having been an international missionary myself, it always does my heart good when a pastor or church leader starts asking questions about how to get engaged in the Great Commission overseas. In fact, I’ve been surprised in recent months at the amount of excitement this particular conversation has incited here in Houston. For the last few months, I’ve been working on some plans to help local churches equip potential international missionaries in partnership with the International Mission Board. As this has come up in conversations with various pastors, missions pastors, and regular church folk, I can honestly say it has produced more excitement than any other topic I’ve addressed with churches since I began working at the association. I think more churches are interested in this than we may know. Perhaps the most significant first step for a local church is developing specific partnerships with a global missions team overseas. Partnering directly with a missionary team on the field provides many significant benefits for a local church that cares about reaching the nations with the gospel. To that end, here are five key benefits of developing specific global missions partnerships with missionary teams overseas. It’s Good for the Local Church Leaders When it comes to global missions, many pastors both understand the importance of it and have a desire for their church to be actively engaged in the work, and yet they often feel they lack the expertise necessary to lead a church in a right direction. Having a partnership with experienced missionaries goes a long way in helping local church leaders develop a healthy vision for their church. The missionaries on the ground can be a vital sounding board for the local church as they develop their ministry. Furthermore, pastors will get to learn firsthand about the work of international missions through the deep relationships that can develop with their missionaries overseas. It’s Good for the Missionaries on the Field Speaking as someone who has lived overseas, far away from family and church, it can be lonely or isolating at times. Church partners can be, and should be, a crucial lifeline for the missionary team. Healthy church partners provide significant support and care for their missionary teams through prayer, communication, and sending short term and mid-term volunteer support to aid in the work. Impacting the same place over time reaps a better harvest on the field. A local church’s missions strategy should be a fire hose, not a water sprinkler. When we hop from place to place, attempting to land on a new continent each time we go overseas, we overlook the importance of persistence in the same location. A healthy short term missions strategy for a church is like chopping down an oak tree. With each subsequent team, the church learns more about the area, understands better ways to engage in gospel proclamation, begins to pick up language and culture, and has the huge advantage of returning to continue ministry with the same people. When I was serving in West Africa, we had long-standing church partners that had visited the same villages for over a decade. Those churches had watched children in those villages grow up into adults. They had important relationships, and it allowed the work to progress in a way that trip hopping simply cannot. Helping without Hurting By now, I imagine a good number of pastors and church leaders are familiar with the book When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. If not, you should [check it out]https://amzn.to/3LufYQx). Corbett and Fikkert point out that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we provide aid in a way that actually hurts more than it helps. This is especially true when we cross significant cultural barriers to provide that aid. However, being in a real partnership with a missionary team on the field provides your church with cross-cultural workers who know that location intimately and can help you make wise decisions about what you’re doing there—that is, as long as the local church listens to the missionary team concerning best practices for their engagement. Identifying your own for sending through international missions partnerships. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, long term partnerships with missionary teams overseas provide an important foundation for sending your own to the nations. It is rare that I speak with an international missionary whose personal story does not recount the significance of a short term mission trip in their own calling. When done well, engaging your own congregation in the work of global missions through time spent with a missionary team introduces them firsthand to the missionary task. Furthermore, missionary teams become partners in the work of identifying, equipping, sending, and supporting more from inside your own congregation. Clearly church partnerships with missionary teams are a key component in developing a healthy mission vision in a local church. The benefits above are only a sample of the rich reward that comes to a church when it links up with missionaries on the field to send and support. Of course, once a church is convinced of the need to develop these partnerships, the next step is figuring ou how to find the right partners. And in the next article, I will provide five simple questions to guiding a church in finding the right missionary partners. Further Reading

Keelan Cook Apr 15

"Pleasant words are a honeycomb:
sweet to the taste and health to the body."
~ Proverbs 16:24 #Bible

Keelan Cook Apr 14

"Plans fail when there is no counsel,
but with many advisers they succeed."
~ Proverbs 15:22 #Bible

Keelan Cook Apr 13

"A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict,
but one slow to anger calms strife."
~ Proverbs 15:18 #Bible

Keelan Cook Apr 11

"A discerning mind seeks knowledge,
but the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness."
~ Proverbs 15:14 #Bible

Keelan Cook Apr 10

"A mocker doesn’t love one who corrects him;
he will not consult the wise."
~ Proverbs 15:12 #Bible

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