The Rev'd David W. Fleenor, Assistant Priest

David W. Fleenor began his spiritual journey at the age of twelve in the Southern Baptist church in Roanoke, Virginia. He preached his first sermon when he was thirteen years old. Eventually he became a Pentecostal and attended the Church of God Theological Seminary. During that time he experienced a crisis of faith and realized he could no longer affirm the conservative, evangelical, Pentecostal worldview and began to look for another way to be Christian.

He stumbled upon the Episcopal Church when he discovered the Book of Common Prayer on the bookshelf of a Southern Baptist hospital chaplain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Later, he met a real life Episcopalian and attended his first Episcopal service on Ash Wednesday, 1998. The next year he graduated with a Master of Divinity degree and moved to Alabama to begin a Clinical Pastoral Education program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital. Relieved to find a Christian tradition that was focused on common worship rather than shared dogma, David joined the Episcopal Church in Birmingham and was confirmed in 1999. He worked in the health care industry as a hospital chaplain and patient advocate for five years before moving to New York to attend the General Theological Seminary (GTS).

While at GTS he served as the assistant Episcopal campus chaplain at NYU, as an intern at St. John's in the Village Episcopal Church, and as a special assistant to Bishop George E. Packard, the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies. In 2005 he earned a diploma in Anglican Studies and, in 2006, a Masters degree in Sacred Theology. His Master's thesis was entitled, "Virtual Christian Community: Can you have true and meaningful church online?" He was ordained to the transitional diaconate on June 3, 2006, and to the priesthood on December 18, 2006, at the Church of the Transfiguaration, by the Bishop of Alabama.

In addition to his work at Church of the Transfiguration, he currently serves as a chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor-in-Training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan and Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut.

The Rev. David W. Fleenor
dfleenor@gmail.com