About
Fr. John is an assistant priest at Holy Transfiguration. He and Presvytera Patty are parents of three grown sons – Nicholas, Andrew, and Aaron.
Background
Father John Brown was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1960 and raised in a devout evangelical home. He attended Pace Academy from 1st grade until graduation from high school in 1978. He attended Auburn University 1978-1982, and graduated with dual degrees in English Literature and Economics. He also completed the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps and received his commission in the US Army Reserve upon his graduation.
During his college years he met the former Patrice O’Gwynn, and they were married in 1983.
Following a lifetime sense of call to ministry, he enrolled at Dallas Theological Seminary in 1984. While in this evangelical seminary, he discovered the writings of the early fathers of the Church. This revolutionized his spiritual life and began a journey to find the ancient Church. He transferred to Reformed Theological Seminary, in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1986. He graduated with a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Theology in 1988.
In 1989, he transferred from the Army Reserves to active duty in the US Army as a Chaplain. He served in Operation Desert Storm in 1990. While on active duty at Fort Hood, Texas, he befriended an Orthodox priest/chaplain and began attending Orthodox services weekly. He finally found the early Church in the Orthodox Church. He transferred from active duty back to the reserves in 1996. He became Orthodox and subsequently he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Job (Orthodox Church in America) in 2001, and assigned to serve at Holy Apostles Orthodox Mission in Bloomington, Illinois, while he also served as a full-time chaplain in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He was recalled to active duty to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and deployed to Kuwait and Afghanistan. He finally retired from the Army Reserves in 2004. After he retired from the Bureau of Prisons in 2017, he was transferred from the Orthodox Church in America to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and assigned as assistant priest at Holy Transfiguration in Marietta, Georgia.