The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., Executive Director and Publisher
Fr. Olver is the Executive Director and Publisher of the Living Church Foundation. A priest for more than 18 years, he was the assistant rector at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas (2006-13) and has served widely in the Episcopal Church in diocesan, national, and international capacities. Like the eighth editor of The Living Church, H. Boone Porter, Fr. Olver is a liturgical scholar who takes up this post after having served as a professor at Nashotah House Theological Seminary for nearly a decade (2014-23). His wife, Kristen, is a practicing therapist. They were married in 2001 and have two children. He is a non-stipdendiary assistant priest at Zion Episcopal Church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which he attends with his family.
See his extended biography.
The Rev. Mark Michael, Editor-in-Chief
Fr. Michael is the editor-in-chief of The Living Church, and rector of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Potomac, Maryland. A native of rural western Maryland, he is a graduate of Duke University and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Before his current cure, he served congregations in Maryland, New York, and Virginia, and was assistant chaplain and a history and religion master at Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland. He and his wife, Allison, have two sons. In his spare time, he enjoys fishing and gardening.
email or 607.544.4300
John Schuessler, Managing Editor
John Schuessler is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire where he studied journalism with a news and editorial emphasis. He has served on the staff of the Living Church Foundation for more than two decades, most of those years as managing editor. He is primarily responsible for editorial production of the foundation’s three publications (The Living Church, The Episcopal Musician’s Handbook, and Illuminations), but also oversees TLC’s website and has written many news and feature articles for the magazine. Mr. Schuessler is married and has four children.
email or 414.292.1241
Kirk Petersen, Associate Editor
Kirk Petersen has been an active Episcopalian for thirty years, and a professional communicator longer than that. After starting out as a reporter/editor for a small daily newspaper, he pursued a career in public relations and corporate communications at Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and Finsbury, a New York City PR agency. He spent four years as a lay employee at two local Episcopal churches, and is thrilled to be back in the world of journalism. Kirk earned a bachelor’s degree in politics at Princeton University, and pursued graduate study at Rutgers Business School. He has two adult sons, and his wife, Nina Nicholson, is communications director for the Diocese of Newark.
email or 973.820.1326
Amber D. Noel, Associate Editor & Director of The Living Church Institute
Amber D. Noel enjoys a suitably varied professional life, including ministry, the arts, education, and business. She is a graduate of Duke Divinity School (M.Div. ‘12) and has been a Living Church Institute Fellow at Virginia Theological Seminary as artist-in-residence (’19). Amber facilitates institutional growth and public engagement across the Living Church Foundation’s various ministries, from events to new publications, and directs and hosts The Living Church Podcast. She is the editor of the Daily Devotional and copy editor for essays and articles. Outside of work, she is the author of short fiction and plays an adoring auntie to a handful of children.
Douglas LeBlanc, Associate Editor
Douglas LeBlanc is a longtime religion writer and editor, formerly with Christianity Today, Episcopalians United, Compassion International, and the Morning Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Douglas and his wife, Monica, live in the suburbs of Charleston, South Carolina, and are members of St. John’s Parish Church on Johns Island.
Eugene R. Schlesinger, Editor of Covenant
Eugene R. Schlesinger is Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He earned his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Marquette University, and his research has focused on the relationship between the church's liturgy and its mission, as well as the ongoing relevance of a theology of sacrifice for the contemporary church. He is the author of Missa Est! A Missional Liturgical Ecclesiology (Fortress Press, 2017), and Sacrificing the Church: Mass, Mission, and Ecumenism (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, Fall 2019), and understands his vocation to be an Episcopalian who does Catholic theology.
In addition to his scholarship, Gene is a churchman and a family man. Before his doctoral studies and his entry into the Episcopal Church, he served in pastoral ministry, mainly at a church plant. He and his wife, Loren, just celebrated 17 years of marriage, and together they have two daughters, Joann and Evelyn.
Bonnie Scott, Assistant Editor
Bonnie Scott is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago (M.Div. '22) where she was a two-year seminarian at Church of the Ascension, an Anglo-Catholic parish. She is passionate about Anglican theology, sacred space and architecture, and the many "Great Books" she studied as an undergraduate at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Previously, she has worked with refugees in Greece, taught children about food and sustainability on a farm in Kentucky, and worked as a writing and language tutor. She currently resides in New Orleans with her husband.
Joanna Pawlisch, Advertising Manager
Stephanie Schramm, Administrative Assistant
Associates
- Correspondents — Lauren Anderson-Cripps, Robyn Douglass, Neva Rae Fox, G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Richard J. Mammana Jr., Jesse Masai
- Marketing — Kevin Shanley & Associates
- Circulation Fulfillment — Cambey & West Inc.
The Living Church Foundation, Inc.
Phone: 414.276.5420
P.O. Box 510705, Milwaukee, WI 53203-0121
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