On January 2, 1985, John Schuessler walked into the offices of a small religious publication on State Street in Milwaukee, in the building that once housed the Milwaukee Journal. He had graduated the prior month with a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and landed a gig as an assistant editor at The Living Church. Careers in journalism often involve moving around a lot, and Schuessler figured he’d stay at TLC for about a year.
He quickly earned more and more responsibility. It was only a couple of years before he was promoted to managing editor, reporting to the legendary H. Boone Porter Jr., a priest who helped develop the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.
Schuessler served as managing editor for more than three decades, navigating huge changes in the job, the church, the technology, and the publishing industry. At the end of 2023, he stepped down.
“I learned to really enjoy managing. And managing to me is simply being a servant of the people that you manage, and helping them succeed at what they’re trying to do,” Schuessler said. He also loved “the interaction I would have with readers of the magazine, and then some of the time with advertisers, and some of the time with just people ordering a handbook or whatever,” he said, referring to The Episcopal Musician’s Handbook, a longtime publication of TLC. “I would get a lot of good story ideas just from these from these interactions, and some may have led to donor relationships.”
He enjoyed working with Boone Porter. “You could go into his office with a simple question, and you’d get a 45-minute teaching on some character, some medieval subject, I can’t remember them all. But it would be really fun. And then he’d get done, he’d just kind of chuckle and say, ‘Oh, well,’ and he would move on. So he was always a teacher.” The big controversies in the Episcopal Church in those days were women’s ordination and inclusive language.
Schuessler is an active, devout Christian, and deeply steeped in the history, governance, and culture of the Episcopal Church. But he’s not Episcopalian — never has been.
He was raised Roman Catholic, and for most of his adult life he has worshiped at Eastbrook Church, a huge, nondenominational church in Milwaukee. When he was in college, the wife of a visiting theologian told him, “My husband believes that you should stay in the church you are in until they throw you out. So I took that as a word to the wise — don’t bounce around, you know, just make a decision and stay there.”
I asked if it would be fair to say he knows more about the Episcopal Church than any non-Episcopalian in the country. “No, I don’t know about that,” he said with a laugh. “I would not presume that. But I think I know things that a lot of other people wouldn’t know, just by exposure.”
“He knew the Episcopal Church, backwards and forwards,” said Christopher Wells, former executive director of TLC and now the director of unity, faith, and order for the Anglican Communion. “He knew the bishops’ names, he knew the communicators’ names, he knew the names of parishes.”
“John really valued the work of The Living Church as a ministry of encouragement,” said Mark Michael, editor-in-chief of TLC. “We used to talk about, you know, the priest in Montana, who is serving by himself in a lonely place, and we’re his connection to the rest of the ministry of the church. He loved to take customer service calls and talk to people about things that were happening in their congregation, and bring some of those ideas back to us.”
“It’s a bit overwhelming to consider just how much of the architecture of The Living Church not only has John’s fingerprints, but was shaped and strengthened by him over these 38 years,” said Matthew S.C. Olver, executive director and publisher. “His service to TLC is simply incalculable.”
Here’s my own John Schuessler story: He helped welcome me back into journalism after I spent decades in public relations, and he had a knack for dealing with writers. He called me about a feature article that I had concluded in kind of a quirky way. “I loved your last line!” he said cheerfully, and paused for a beat while I thanked him. “And now I’m going to take it out.” He explained his reasoning, he was right, and we laughed about it.
John and his wife, Dawn, have raised four children — the youngest just graduated from college. He’s always enjoyed working with young people. “My wife and I led the junior high group Wednesday nights at our church for about five years, as well as the Sunday school classes,” he said. Post-TLC, he will continue to write and edit, but he intends to spend a lot more time with “young, urban men and women — that’s been a focus of ministry for me. Anytime you have someone who listens to you and thinks a little differently about their life,” that’s time well spent.
He’s found what may be an ideal situation: teaching English to high school students at Eastbrook Academy, a Christian K-12 school on the same campus as his church. Listen up, kids: Mr. Schuessler has stories to tell.
