John retired from teaching after twenty-six years with the Montgomery County, Maryland Public School System. During his tenure with the school system, he taught general music for twenty-one years at the elementary level and five years at the secondary level, and worked extensively with choruses at both levels. He received the Broom Award for Excellence awarded by his home county for his work in composition for children.

John has served Warner Memorial Presbyterian Church in Kensington, Maryland for thirty-nine years as Organist and Director of Music. He oversees three choral groups and two bell choirs. Over eighty members of the congregation participate in the music groups of the church.

John's compositions are found in the catalogues of over ten nation-wide publishers, and they have been heard on national television in both the United States and Great Britain. He presently has over 150 anthems for children, youth and adults in print. He also wrote songs for both Silver Burdette and Macmillan publishing houses for their 1988 school music series.  More recently his compositions have also been geared toward virtuoso solo artists, both vocal and instrumental.

Over the last decade John has served as clinician for children or youth choirs at national conferences held by Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, American Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Disciples of Christ. His work as a choral clinician has taken him to over 50 children's choir festivals in the last 15 years. He has taught Children's Choir Techniques at the Church Music Institute held by the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music.

John has served both on the Choristers Guild Board of Directors and The Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians. Recently he was consultant for the Exploring Faith Sunday school curriculum published by the United Methodist Publishing House, supporting the writing teams and providing music resources for the curriculum.

Before that he edited the junior level of Abingdon's graded choir curriculum, Church Music for Children.
He works as a free lance writer for a number of music’s periodicals including Church Music Workshop, a journal published by Abingdon and The Chorister, the journal for the Choristers Guild of Garland, Texas

With members of a consultant group, New Paths, John co-authored two books on incorporating the arts into Christian Education programs: Something Old, Something New:Hymns to Sing and Things to Do, Volumes I (Who Is Jesus?) & II (Exploring the Christian Year), published by Abingdon Press.

In 2008 Augsburg Fortress published Sing the Stories of Jesus: Twenty-Five Songs for the Youngest Singers, a collection of lectionary-based songs for ages 4-7 with words by Mary and music by John.  Included are suggestions for teaching the stories and the music.

John has collaborated with Mary in producing three collections of new hymns, Come Away With Me and Time Now to Gather, published by Abingdon Press, and The Song Lingers On, published by Zimbel Press. Some of these hymns and others have been included in the United Methodist hymnal supplement, The Faith We Sing, and the Presbyterian supplement, Sing the Faith.  John and Mary have written over twenty-five hymns that are yet unpublished, and will occasionally be offering some of these for free download on this web site.