I. Francis Kyle III is a pastor in Halifax County, North Carolina.
For over 30 years he has ministered in a variety of American (WA, KY, NC), Canadian (Alberta, Ontario) and Israeli rural, suburban and metropolitan settings. While serving the local church is his primary vocation, community engagement volunteerism and independent scholarship are two of his secondary or supplemental callings.
After liberal arts studies at the University of Hartford (CT, did not graduate), leaving his semi-native (ages 5-19) American northeast to work in three western U.S. national park hotels/restaurants (Glacier-MT, Big Bend-TX, Olympic-WA), repenting of his sins and being saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ at age 21.5 in an employee dorm room while a waiter at Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park, he resumed and completed his higher education at Canada's Prairie College and Toronto Baptist Seminary, and Western Seminary in Portland, OR.
Since his formal studies ended the curious "lifelong learner" has earned over fifteen university-based online professional certificates in a wide variety of fields, including the humanities, social sciences, community engagement, business, philanthropy, civic resiliency and process improvement methodology (Lean Six Sigma). He has also completed numerous in-person leadership development training programs, both faith based and non-faith based, and with the two most recent being with Tar Heel Leadership (2022, church pastoral training) and the Raleigh-based Rural Economic Development Institute (fall 2023).
During his five years in the healthcare field in Louisville, KY, he earned three professional certifications with the international Healthcare Sterile Processing Association; served as a founding officer (2016) and later president for HSPA's Kentuckiana chapter (KY and southern IN); and authored two opinion-editorial articles for Infection Control Today magazine (see here and here).
Dr. Kyle is a member of and periodic academic conference lecturer for the American Society of Church History, Evangelical Missiological Society, Evangelical Theological Society and Nineteenth Century Studies Association.
Most recently (2024), he lectured at annual conferences sponsored by the regional ETS-Southeast (Toccoa Falls, GA) and national Canadian Baptist Historical Society (Cambridge, Ontario, Canada), and the triennial International Conference on Baptist Studies (Cambridge, UK).
His other, non-academic, national and international memberships include the National Trust for Historic Preservation, American Motorcyclist Association, Iron Butt Association ("World's Toughest Motorcycle Riders") and Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. Though not a member nor a golfer, and since age 13, he is a longtime championship and playoff tournament volunteer-ambassador for the Professional Golfers' Association of America and the United States Golf Association.
In 2007 Kyle founded Uncommon Christian Ministries. The preaching and writing ministry seeks to expose those yet outside of the faith to uncommon (biblical) Christianity and to help common Christians flee spiritual immaturity and mediocrity and seek to become uncommon or mature, growing Christians.
The historical model and inspiration for the informal Protestant ministry is James Brainerd Taylor (1801-1829). The Middle Haddam, CT-born, New York City-raised (as a teen) and Lawrenceville School (NJ), Princeton University and Yale Seminary-educated Taylor defined an "uncommon" Christian as an "eminently holy, self-denying, cross-bearing, Bible, everyday" Christian. These descriptive words are what Kyle calls the five pillars or traits of uncommon Christianity.
J. B. Taylor is a maternal cousin of the Haddam, CT-born First Great Awakening missionary David Brainerd (1718-1747) who posthumously became popular due to the Life and Diary of David Brainerd memoir compiled by Jonathan Edwards (1749). Both Brainerd (age 29) and Taylor (age 27) died young from tuberculosis and were often compared to each other--for their intense spirituality, deep piety and ministerial zeal--as well as to the English missionary Henry Martyn (1781-1812, died age 31) and the Scottish pastor Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813-1843, died age 29).
J. B. Taylor's primary institutional legacy is his being the primary founder (February 4, 1825) of what today is called Princeton Christian Fellowship campus ministry at Princeton University.
Kyle's two books on the Second Great Awakening evangelist J. B. Taylor received over 40 recommendations from various authors, historians, evangelists, pastors, professors and university campus ministers and students from around the world. More books are forthcoming in the "uncommon Christian" series.
In addition to books, he periodically authors book reviews, articles and opinion-editorial essays on a variety of topics--history, theology, missiology, political science and healthcare--and for a broad range of publications, including for the New England Historical Association News, New England Journal of History and Great Commission Research Journal.
