On Friday, March 13, clergy and faithful gathered in Holy Apostles Church in Beltsville, MD to bid farewell to its longtime rector – the newly departed Archpriest George Johnson, who reposed in the Lord on Monday, March 9.

The Funeral Rite for a Priest was officiated by the dean of the Capital Region, Archpriest Victor Potapov, co-served by:

• Archimandrite John (Townsend; dean of Georgia, Alabama & Mississippi)
• Archpriest John Johnson (rector of St. Thecla Church in Wheaton, MD)
• Archpriest Gregory Safchuk (rector of St. Mark OCA Church in Bethesda, MD)
• Archpriest Gabriel Weller (rector of Holy Myrrhbearers Church in Mt. Crawford, VA)
• Archpriest Alexander Resnikoff (cleric of St. John the Baptist Cathedral Washington, DC)
• Priest Joshua Burnett (rector of Holy Cross Antiochian Church in Linthicum Heights, MD)
• Priest Damian Dantinne (cleric of St. John the Baptist Cathedral)
• Priest Nicholas Park (assistant pastor of St. Nicholas Church in McKinney, TX)
• Priest Christopher Johnson (acting parish rector)
• Priest Robert Miclean (rector of Holy Archangels OCA Church in Denton, MD)
• Hieromonk Razhden (Ashjazadeh; cleric of St. Mary of Egypt Church in Roswell, GA)
• Protodeacon John Dean (cleric of St. John the Baptist Cathedral)
• Deacon Peter Gardner (cleric of St. Thecla Church), and
• Deacon Christopher Capp (parish cleric).

Praying in church was His Eminence, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen). Subdeacon Marc Strumpf assisted.

The church was filled with family, parishioners, and spiritual children of the newly reposed. The choir sang prayerfully, as an homage to the decades of devotion Fr. George gave to the realm of English liturgical music and translations.

At the conclusion of the service, Metropolitan Jonah relayed the condolences of the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Nicholas of Eastern America & New York, and then delivered a comforting homily.

Fr. Victor Potapov likewise delivered a eulogy, and expressed his condolences on behalf of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, DC, where Fr. George and his family were baptized into the Orthodox Faith, and where he later served as choir conductor, deacon, and priest.

Additional eulogies were delivered by Archimandrite John (Townsend; dean of Georgia, Alabama & Mississippi) and Fr. George's son, Priest Christopher.

Fr. George was interred adjacent to the historic chapel and property acquired by the parish for its future home.

Memory Eternal to the newly reposed Archpriest George!

Archpriest George Johnson (March 3, 1948 – March 9, 2026)

Archpriest George Johnson was born Lawrence George Johnson on March 3, 1948, the second son of Daniel Bramlett Johnson and Wynona Enid Johnson (née Wiser). He grew up on his family’s small, four-acre farm in Beltsville, MD. He was named after two of his uncles: Larry on his mother’s side and George – killed near the end of World War II – on his father’s. He was called "Larry" for the first few months of his life, but when his grandfather first held him in his arms, he wept and said "He looks like George." He was called "George" thereafter.

His parents were faithful Baptists and founding members of Berwyn Baptist Church in College Park, MD, where his mother taught Sunday School for 60 years. He began choir directing at the age of 17, at the Anglican church in Washington, DC. From his parents he learned a love of singing praise to God, and an example of absolute devotion in service to the Lord; if there was a service, a bible study, or a choir practice, the Johnson family was there.

While at High Point High School, he also gained a love of the wider choral tradition in the school choir, under the direction of James Porterfield, in a day when public high school choirs sang the classical choral repertoire. He carried his love of music to the University of Maryland, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition. There he met his future wife, Deborah Jane Garvey, also a music student at UMD, and the daughter of his piano professor, Evelyn Garvey. They married in 1976, the bicentennial year of our country; this year is their 50th anniversary.

His faith in God never wavered, and he was of a contented and conservative disposition, not one to seek religious adventure. However, Deborah, having been raised in an agnostic family, was restlessly seeking a God she could love and know, and was unable to find Him anywhere. Together they journeyed, spiritually, in a manner familiar to many Americans who eventually found Holy Orthodoxy.

By 1985, George was the choir director and organist at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring, MD, and Deborah was teaching one of the youth Sunday School classes when they first discovered the Orthodox Church. They acquired a copy of Russia’s Catacomb Saints, as well as the Jordanville Prayer Book, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, and The Ladder of Divine Ascent. At the same time, the Episcopal Church was declining in more and more obvious ways, and they compared what they saw around them with the remarkable and wondrous – and often harrowing – things they read in their new books, and the contrast was staggering. They began attending Orthodox services regularly in May of 1986. Their first divine service was the Vigil for Thomas Sunday. Pascha was late that year, and the sun was setting on Bright Saturday, at the close of Bright Week. They walked into the church, and knew they were finally home. They became catechumens, along with their son, 7-year-old Christopher Ian.

George gave up his music position at the Episcopal church, and with it a third of his family’s income.

George and Deborah had sought the Church they had read of in Russia’s Catacomb Saints, and the parish they found was St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, DC, of which Archpriest Victor Potapov was and is still the rector. There they met and spoke for long hours with Deacon (now Protodeacon) Leonid Mickle and Tatiana Vsevolodovna Prujan, who later became godfather and godmother to the family when they were baptized along with Christopher, then aged 7, on August 24, 1986.

Even before their baptism, George began to voraciously learn the Russian choral tradition. He read the Obikhod and other musical texts, learning the Znamenny and Kievan chant melodies, and beginning what would become his life’s work: setting English translations of Orthodox hymnody to the traditional chants of the Russian Orthodox Church. After baptism, he became the choir director for the newly established English services at St. John’s, and the fruit of his labor went immediately into use.

As the years went on, the English-speaking community at St. John’s grew, and Fr. George was chosen to help lead this new expanded flock. He was made a deacon during Great Lent in 1993, and later ordained a priest on Palm Sunday in 1994. Even after his ordination, he continued leading choir practices and setting music to English, beginning the project that would become "A Church Singer’s Companion," modeled on the Sputnik Psalomschika. This work has grown and is used by many English-speaking parishes around the world.

The growth of the English-speaking community continued and reached the maximum size containable at St. John’s. In 2001, Fr. George received a blessing from then-Bishop Gabriel of Manhattan to start a parish in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, with the mission to serve the entire cycle of ROCOR services in the English language. It was very difficult to leave the parish of his family’s baptism, where he had been formed in Orthodoxy. But even though it was painful for many, the need was also very clear. Holy Apostles Church was founded, with the first services being served in July of 2001, in the little house which his father had built, and in which he grew up in Beltsville, MD.

Holy Apostles spent a year in the house of Fr. George’s childhood before finding a more accommodating location, still in Beltsville, where they are located today. This year will mark their 25th anniversary. During that whole time until his health began to decline, Fr. George, in addition to serving as rector, continued to lead or be present at nearly every choir practice, setting or composing new music for the Church, carrying on the example laid down by his parents so many years before. Holy Apostles has brought many new converts into the Faith.

In recent years, Fr. George became severely anemic, requiring monthly blood transfusions in the last years of his life. This condition caused frequent dizziness and general unsteadiness on his feet. On March 2nd of this year, a day before his 78th birthday, Fr. George was taking the trash cans out to the curb as he had done thousands of times. While doing so, despite using a walker, he lost his balance and fell, striking his head on the concrete. A week later, March 9th, he passed into the arms of our Lord at 12:40 PM.

Fr. George has left behind a lasting legacy: for his family, for Holy Apostles, for ROCOR, and for the entire English-speaking Orthodox world. We will never forget him.

We close with a quote from one of our members, a young mother who converted to Orthodoxy at Holy Apostles, and brought with her her husband and children.

"Memory Eternal to our most dear Fr. George. One of the founders of the most beautiful parish on earth. I have never seen such beauty as when I first entered Holy Apostles; it was like Heaven touched earth. His music in English that I understood healed my soul to the core. I am forever grateful."

We, too, are forever grateful to God for the life of Archpriest George Johnson, 03/03/1948-03/09/2026.

He is survived by his wife, Sister Deborah Johnson; his son, Priest Christopher Johnson; daughter-in-law, Matushka Dorothy Johnson; and five grandchildren: Daniel, Charlotte Ann, Justinian, Theodore Alfred, and Esther.

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." – Joshua 24:15