Melissa Wiginton serves as vice president for Education Beyond the Walls at Austin Seminary. 

She has long stood in the space between the church and the academy, finding the ways that the gifts and struggles of each speak to the other in God’s ecology of institutions. Since establishing Education Beyond the Walls, she has led two major grant initiatives, Pastoral Leadership for Public Life and The 787 Collective for Young Adults and the Church, as well as multiple programmatic initiatives ranging from Instituto de Maria y Marta to The Joy Collective to Voyage to the Next Dimension. Increasingly, her vocational location invites imagination for what is emerging that will nourish our learning and flourishing. Her inclinations toward bringing people together, organizing structures for learning, using the spoken and written word, and providing cookies serve her well.

She is a member of University United Methodist Church, Austin, where she serves as a lector and church school teacher.

Winsome host Sarah Allen speaks with Pastor Josh Robinson, a student in the Seminary's Doctor of Ministry program, who describes his doctoral work as focusing on the "re-sacralization of those who have been dehumanized" in the immigrant crisis on the Texas Mexico border.

Welcome to Winsome! Our first episode features a conversation between The Rev. Sarah Allen and Austin Seminary's Academic Dean Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer. Sarah and Margaret explore the future of theological education at Austin Seminary; the task of balancing parenthood with the demands of ministry; and Margaret’s vocational journey that led her toward becoming a professor.