Wesleyan Impact Partners
143 episodes listed below
Pastoral imagination for public, faithful leadership.
Igniting Imagination gathers pastors, bishops, innovators, and community leaders for generous conversations about what the church can still become. Its best moments connect local practice with larger questions of dignity, belonging, systems, and spiritual formation.
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Igniting Imagination is a thoughtful church-leadership interview show rooted in pastoral curiosity and public responsibility. It listens slowly. Across recent episodes, Lisa Greenwood and rotating co-hosts speak with leaders working at the edges of congregation, neighborhood, institution, and technology. The show is especially attentive to what faithfulness requires when old forms are under pressure. Guests talk about worship and justice, immigrant sanctuary, economic dignity, abolitionist repair, public education, denominational leadership, and technology shaped by spiritual concern. The conversations rarely rush toward tidy answers. They linger over how a ministry begins, what failed early, what a congregation had to learn, and how proximity changes leadership over time. A recurring question is how churches can become useful to the people around them without losing theological depth. Another is how leaders can redesign systems so access, dignity, and belonging are expanded rather than restricted. The show’s language is warm, moral, and grounded in ministry practice. It is comfortable speaking about call, gospel, prayer, systems, formation, and repair. It also keeps its attention on concrete places: neighborhoods, schools, prisons, hospitals, detention centers, resource fairs, and denominational structures. Episodes about technology are not gadget talk. They ask how AI and design reshape care, meaning-making, human longing, and sacred experience. Episodes about justice are not abstract statements of concern. They return to local action, clergy presence, institutional barriers, and the practical courage required to keep showing up. The rhythm is unhurried, with questions that summarize a guest’s insight before asking what it means for the wider church. Listeners looking for hot takes may find it too patient. Listeners looking for serious, generous conversation about Christian leadership will find a show with unusual steadiness. Its strength is the way it treats imagination as disciplined practice: formed in community, tested by real need, and accountable to the people most affected.
Made for: For pastors, lay leaders, denominational leaders, ministry innovators, and church-adjacent organizers who want reflective conversation tied to real community practice. It also suits listeners thinking about justice, technology, and institutional change through a Christian leadership lens.
What sets it apart: Igniting Imagination pairs theological warmth with operational detail, letting leaders describe the slow work behind public ministry. It stands apart by treating innovation as formation, repair, and neighborly responsibility rather than trend-chasing.
Every movement for change starts with a generative conversation. The Igniting Imagination podcast features rich conversations with leaders across the church landscape that invite you into new possibilities for yourself, your church, and your community. Each episode offers inspiring ideas to spark the Spirit within you as a leader and inspire courage and innovation to bring about human flourishing grounded in love, generosity, and belonging.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Church leadership becomes an operating discipline here, measured through community services, institutional choices, relationship-building, and the practical demands of local responsibility.
Igniting Imagination turns conversations with church leaders into close studies of institutional responsibility, community investment, and leadership under pressure.
A Monday respite center gives your church committee more to ponder than its next program.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded conversation about the church's public role and how young leaders are formed.
Igniting Imagination ends its season with a quiet, grounded conversation about faithfulness, the church's public role, and how institutions shape young leaders. Lisa Greenwood and Dr.
A neighbor-centered meditation on economic mobility, long-term presence, and belonging.
Matt St. Pierre's conversation with Lisa Greenwood and Dr. Erin Keeker keeps its focus on economic mobility and the church's part in helping a community flourish.
A humane, grounded look at a church becoming a steady place of practical care.
It follows a church that grows into a dependable place for legal help, health support, insurance guidance, and benefits screening and enrollment.
A calm, searching guide for church leaders learning to listen before they lead.
This episode follows church leaders as they try to read a changed world without pretending the inherited map still fits. Lisa Greenwood and Gil keep returning to the same plain truth: people arrive with real questions about meaning, belonging, and God, and the church's first…
A grounded conversation about faith, power, and moral courage.
The episode sits at the intersection of church leadership, moral courage, and how Christianity is heard in public life. Rev. William H. Lamar IV argues against accommodation to extraction, oppression, and dehumanization, while Gil Rendell keeps the focus on how faith reads…
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Catholic arguments with pint-table warmth.
Daily headlines under Christian judgment.
Catholic homilies for the next faithful step.
Catholic teaching for ordinary discipleship.
Serious Bible questions, patiently reasoned.
Bishop LaTrelle Easterling ties the United Methodist baptismal covenant to anti-racism work, saying she cannot claim to have risen from the baptismal waters and not work toward justice.
Bishop Gregory Von Palmer says the church is "unfinished" because every generation must discern faithfulness anew, not because God has abandoned it.
Lisa Greenwood and Blair Thompson connect church leadership with discernment, asking what God is calling congregations to do now.
The church stays at the center.
Lisa Greenwood opens the conversation with Matt around economic mobility and flourishing.
This episode explores the role of faith communities in confronting systemic injustice and promoting human flourishing through deeper systemic change.
Lea describes a ministry built around meeting neighbors with concrete care.
This episode explores the complex questions about technology's impact on human relationships and faith, featuring Reverend Dr.
Hosts Lisa Greenwood and Sue Phillips interview Bishop Cedric Bridgeforth about reclaiming ancient tools for modern leadership in a desperate age.
A conversation with social entrepreneur Tere Esquibel about purpose, community, and new technologies of belonging, framed within Christian leadership and spiritual renewal.
A conversation about how religious leaders can embrace technology to create sacred experiences and foster belonging in a changing world.
A conversation with Reverend Lorenzo Labrija about faith-based innovation and the ethical use of AI in religious contexts.
A conversation about religious leaders as technologists, exploring digital tools and practices for church innovation.
Host Lisa Greenwood and guests explore the idea of ministry as a technology, discussing how ancient practices can become fresh tools for spiritual leaders.
This bonus episode of Igniting Imagination analyzes Carrie Newhoff's article on seven disruptive church trends for 2026, discussing their resonance and nuances for church leaders in mainline denominational settings.
Lisa Greenwood and Gil Rendell return to the season's guiding question about reimagining and remapping the religious landscape.
Lisa Greenwood and Rev.
This episode continues a conversation with Rev.
This episode introduces a new season exploring the future of faith and the church, featuring co-host Rev.
This episode introduces season 14 of the Igniting Imagination podcast, featuring host Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev.
This episode explores how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring insights from experts on leveraging church land to serve the neighborhood.
A podcast series exploring how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring conversations with leaders and experts.
This episode explores how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring experts Shannon Hopkins and Mark Elston.
A podcast series exploring how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring conversations with leaders on theology, practical steps, and community impact.
This episode explores how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring insights from experts on leveraging church land to serve the neighborhood.
A podcast about reimagining church property for missional purposes, featuring conversations with leaders on theology and practical ideas.
This episode explores how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring insights from leaders on theology, congregation conversations, and neighborhood service.
This episode explores how churches can reimagine their property for missional purposes, featuring insights from experts on leveraging church land to serve the community.
This episode introduces Shannon Hopkins and Mark Elston as hosts exploring the topic of church property transition and its opportunities for innovative use in ministry and community development.
This episode explores the theme of joy in the context of church leadership and community, featuring guests who discuss their work in centering marginalized voices and eco-justice.
Hosts Lisa Greenwood and Kathy McShane introduce a conversation about 'small boats' with guests Kenda Creasy-Dean and Michael Beck, exploring themes essential to the future church.
A podcast exploring themes essential to the future church, focusing on love for place and people in ministry.
Hosts Lisa Greenwood and Kathy McShane introduce a season exploring essential themes for the future church, with today's episode focusing on power, featuring guests Ilan Babchuk and Bipin Tech.
A conversation about church leadership and innovation, exploring what is around the corner for the church.