What if the word unfinished is not a verdict on the church, but an invitation to it?
The Unfinished Church begins with a simple conviction. The church is unfinished, not because it is failing and not because God has abandoned it, but because every generation is invited to discern again what faithfulness looks like. In this first conversation, Rev. Dr. Blair Thompson welcomes Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer to talk about the phrase that gives this show its name, the earlier season of work it grew out of, and the questions worth carrying into a moment of extraordinary change.
Bishop Palmer has served the church for more than four decades with wisdom, humility, and a pastor's heart. He traces the roots of this podcast back to a season of national grief and reckoning around race, and then further back still, to the verse he claims as his life verse from the first epistle of John and to the Wesley hymn that prays, "Finish, then, thy new creation.” Out of that comes a vision of a church that can affirm what it does well and still critique itself honestly, along with a conversation wide enough to include people of faith, people of other faiths, and people of no faith at all. As he puts it, everybody has a stake in a church that is in the process of becoming.
Listen as Blair and Bishop Palmer explore why retirement has sharpened, rather than softened, his sense of urgency, what it means to turn walls into bridges and walk across them, and why the first place we find the power to do any of this is less in isolation and more in conversation and community.
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Host
Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer is senior advisor for Texas Methodist Foundation and Wesleyan Impact Partners. He works closely with Rev. Lisa Greenwood, president and chief executive officer, and the executive team to shape initiatives to establish and deepen relationships with leaders and ministries across the Wesleyan ecosystem.
Bishop Palmer is currently serving as the Council of Bishops' executive secretary and in 2008, he served a two-year term as the Council of Bishops’ president. He has served as president of the General Board of Higher Education and as a board member of numerous organizations, including The United Methodist Publishing House, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, United Theological Seminary, and OhioHealth.
Bishop Palmer earned his undergraduate degree from George Washington University and a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School. In 2000, Bishop Palmer was elected to the episcopacy and was the resident bishop of the West Ohio Conference of The United Methodist Church before retiring in September 2024.
Co-Host
Rev. Dr. Blair Thompson is Chief Learning and Innovation Officer at Texas Methodist Foundation and Wesleyan Impact Partners, where she leads the organizations’ work to form leaders, ignite imagination across the church, and generate and share learning for a changing landscape.
Connect
Visit our show's website at https://wesleyanimpactpartners.org/the_unfinished_church/.