Encourage ideas initially on northern part of church (7)
I believe the answer is:
inspire
'encourage' is the definition.
(inspiring is a kind of encouraging)
'ideas initially on northern part of church' is the wordplay.
'initially' suggests taking the first letters.
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'northern' becomes 'n' (abbreviation e.g. N. Ireland).
'part of church' becomes 'spire'.
The first letter of 'ideas' is 'i'.
'i'+'n'+'spire'='INSPIRE'
(Other definitions for inspire that I've seen before include "Breathe - fire" , "Fill a person with the urge to do something" , "Galvanize" , "Excite" , "Breath in; animate" .)