[1] After graduating, he saw problems in the Roman Catholic Church; he stopped attending services and began to search for the truth, including in Buddhist and other eastern sources.

On Palm Sunday of the same year he was ordained a subdeacon and a couple of months thereafter he graduated from Holy Trinity Seminary.

He also served as confessor and spiritual father of the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in Wayne, West Virginia, the largest English-language monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

On May 15, 2008, the Council of Bishops of the ROCOR decreed to send the curricula vitae of archimandrite George (Schaefer) and protopriest John Shaw along with accompanying appeals to Patriarch Alexius II of Moscow and All Russia for the confirmation of their candidacies for episcopal consecration.

Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral), the vicar of whom he became, could not be present, as was preparing to attend the funeral of Patriarch Alexius II in Russia.

[9] Synod of Bishops of ROCOR on May 5–7, 2009 decided to form a commission to study the relationship with the Orthodox Church in America and to hold joint meetings to discuss the sources of the division between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the American Metropoliate; bishop George became its president; also Synod of Bishops decided to reassign the Holy Cross Hermitage, which formerly was an affiliated monastery (a podvorie) of the Holy Trinity Monastery, to Eastern American Diocese, entrusting with arranging for the election of its abbot".

[11] May 25, 2010 in consideration of his labour for the Church and of 60th anniversary he was awarded the Order of St. Seraphim of Sarov, II degree.

[12] On January 27, 2013, at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington he attended the enthronement of Metropolitan of All America and Canada Tikhon.

[14] On October 7, 2014, he was appointed vicar of First-Hierarch metropolitan Hilarion for Australian and New Zealand Diocese with title bishop of Canberra.

[18] Metropolitan Nicholas formally elevated Bishop George to the rank of archbishop on the 12th of July, 2024, after the liturgy service took place at Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Strathfield, New South Wales,[18][19] where Archbishop George serves as a member of the clergy.