C Scott Kinder-Pyle

C. Scott Kinder-Pyle was raised amid the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five children, born to Robert and Avanell Pyle. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (1988), where he met his spouse, Sheryl Lynn Kinder, he became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and has served in a variety of settings as pastor, adjunctive professor and chaplain. Scott and Sheryl have launched two children, Ian and Philip, into adulthood and pray for their continued journeys into the wondrous love of God imbued in all things, seen and unseen.

For Scott, writing poems has always been a haven... as well as a haunt for jackals. His Doctor of Ministry thesis (from Columbia Theological Seminary in 2008) was entitled "Pastor as Struggling Poet," and in 2013, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University. Kinder-Pyle's essays and poems have been published in Sojourners, Theology Today and various other literary journals. In 2018, his collection, "There's No I in Debris," and subtitled, "Except This One," included verse describing his complex relationship with the institutional church and its witness to Jesus of Nazareth. In 2025, following his certification as a chaplain in the Association of Professional Chaplains, he published "Hospice Chaplain, Interrupted," which contemplates end-of-life scenarios as grief-laden interruptions to our all-too-certain and trivialized understandings of the Mystery of the Divine Presence.

Chaplain Scott still strives to serve as a hospice chaplain, an interim pastor in the P.C. (USA), a spouse, a father, a Philadelphia sports fan, a lazy fisher for trout, a water-color artist, a friend to the vulnerable, a poet and child of God.