Evan Church was born in California, and raised in Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, where he attended high school on the cusp of Kenya's magnificent Rift Valley. Church returned to the States for college, completing an art degree at Spring Arbor University, then returned to Africa as a relief worker. He spent over a year in Rwanda at an orphanage which housed children who had lost parents during the war, and later served as the director of a training school for Malawian ministers.

Today, Church divides his time between his Michigan studio and African relief work.