Our Trinity College

Single-Minded Mission

Trinity International University (TIU) is a Christian university affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America. TIU has campuses in California and Illinois. Though each of these institutions serves a distinct purpose and provides a unique experience, one mission unites them all: to “educate men and women to engage in God’s redemptive work in the world.” We want to enable our students—at all entities and in every discipline—to be prepared to lead others, as they are entrusted with the gospel to think and live as Christ-followers in the twenty-first century.

Choosing the right educational institution is one of the most important choices you’ll ever make. Trinity International University gives you multiple unique educational opportunities in a variety of locations. No matter which path you choose, welcome to the Trinity International University family!

The DNA of Trinity

We are a diverse community of cultures, church traditions, ideas, experiences, and stories. Our students come from all walks of life, different parts of the country, and around the world with a variety of experiences, hopes, and dreams. Yet we share the same DNA. We are all entrusted with the gospel—which requires us to know it, live it, and make it known. We seek to join faith and learning in a distinctive way at each of our TIU schools, inspiring possibilities as you explore how your Christian faith impacts every area of life.

Our collective desire to worship in faithfulness, mentor in hope, and build bridges in love unifies us all as we pursue academic excellence.

Three cords run through all things Trinity:

Worship in Faithfulness: Trinity has by God’s grace remained faithful and unswerving in its commitment to Scripture. When we worship in Spirit and in truth, we are worshiping in faithfulness. Here at Trinity, worship is important to who we are, and worship is a key component of our Evangelical Free Church heritage. For these reasons, we are committed afresh to worshipping in faithfulness—in every area of life.

Mentor in Hope: Our mission is to educate men and women to engage in God’s redemptive work in the world. The most effective way for that engagement with redemption to take hold is by engaging students one at a time. This is the same way Jesus engaged his followers in God’s redemptive work: one disciple at a time. Today’s students are looking for a guide, someone who’s a little further down the path and can emulate a mature Christian life—intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Our staff and faculty are known for engaging with you to provide the kind of mentorship you’re looking for.

Build Bridges in Love: Because God so loved the world, Jesus dared to build bridges to reach marginalized people. Jesus is asking his disciples to follow his lead in building bridges of love. When Trinity first took root in 1897, it was only because a collection of under-resourced but hard-working Scandinavian immigrants, who needed collegiate and theological education, decided it was time to create their own place of learning. Today, by the grace of God, Trinity campuses are diverse—ours are among the most diverse campuses in the country. We participate in God’s redeeming work as we help create a world where all the familiar dividing walls and corresponding ideologies have already been broken down in Christ.

A Biblical-Theological Foundation of Racial Reconciliation

Trinity International University exists “to educate men and women to engage in God’s redemptive work in the world.” At the center of God’s redemptive work in a broken and divided world is the reconciliation of all things back to himself through Christ. The intersection between God’s ministry of reconciliation and TIU’s own values of community focus and cultural engagement, and its mission, compels us to consider intentionally how TIU might become a learning community that embodies gospel-centered reconciliation, which in turn, can effectively form and educate students who think biblically and act Christianly as agents of the ongoing work of reconciliation, especially in our world of racial conflict and tension.

Summary of Trinity's Institutional Commitments

In light of the supremacy and authority of Scripture and the theological foundations and principles that flow from it, and in view of TIU’s community focus and cultural engagement values, and TIU’s mission statement, TIU, as a Christian learning community, makes the following three institutional commitments to live as a reconciled community informed by the following givens under the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The following commitments are intended to be consistent with Scripture and interpreted in accordance therewith, providing guidance for TIU as a learning community. The following commitments focus on relationships and racial reconciliation, recognizing that our human tendency to discriminate against those unlike us (whether with respect to race or in other areas) is a universal product of the sin nature.

Given the relational nature of our loving and just Triune God, who is a unity-in-diversity, given our dignity and value as creatures made in the image of our God, given the alienating brokenness of the world, and given the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the peacemaking task to which we are called:

1. TIU commits to the biblical practices consistent with peacemaking and racial reconciliation: God calls his people to love their neighbors, to be agents of reconciliation in today’s world of racial conflict and violence. Many TIU students come from racially homogenous communities and congregations, with limited opportunities to interact with Christians from other ethnic and racial backgrounds. TIU, as a racially diverse Christian learning community, thus has a unique opportunity to express the Kingdom experience of reconciliation for its students, staff, and faculty.As a university, therefore, we commit to the task of (a) continually developing and teaching a robust biblical theology of racial reconciliation, (b) intentionally creating spaces in and out of classrooms where members can develop deeply meaningful and transformative relationships across racial and ethnic boundaries, (c) regularly modeling the Christian practice of hospitality, repentance, and forgiveness, and (d) producing Christian leaders who are able to collaborate effectively with others in the ministry of reconciliation in today’s divisive world (2 Cor 5:19).

2. TIU commits to the biblical practice of justice: A biblical understanding of reconciliation includes justice. This is especially critical to racial reconciliation since racism and racial inequality continue to undermine the goal of racial healing and unity. TIU, as a Christian university, strives to grow in its journey of racial reconciliation and justice by practicing the biblical value of mutuality. That is to say, TIU seeks to foster true equality among all its members who come from different ethnic, gender, and racial backgrounds, such that image-bearers relate to other image-bearers with genuine honor, fairness, and respect. Rather than engage in the politics of identity that seeks to advance the interest of one’s own people group, as a Christian community, we aim to serve the interests of “others” as Christ modeled for us (Phil 2:1-5). As a Christian university, TIU commits to empower all members of its community to fully exercise their gifts, working towards eliminating forms of racial prejudice and systemic racism that can undermine this goal of peacemaking or shalom bringing.

3. TIU commits to the practice of affirming Christ-centered unity-in-diversity: As our church and society become more diverse and globalized, TIU commits to provide education through which our students will learn how to lead and serve in rich intercultural and international contexts. TIU strives to become a Christ-centered learning community that is racially and ethnically diverse and hospitable, providing opportunities for students to learn from and with those who come from different backgrounds, providing potentially transformational experiences that assist students to become more effective Kingdom citizens and leaders. In doing so, TIU will avoid any approach that minimizes the richness of diversity by denying the God-affirmed recognition of diverse peoples (Rev 7:9), and “assimilationist” approaches that unnecessarily favor a dominant group’s cultural values and practices, or fail to appropriately affirm and incorporate the cultural values and practices. of others, to the extent consistent with Scripture.

The rationale for this policy may be found in “A Biblical Theological Foundation of Racial Reconciliation.”

TIU is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). As such, we are committed to learning, growing, and deepening our understanding of how we can provide and strengthen support for all students on our campuses.

CCCU institutions ascribe to a number of biblical convictions that are considered counter-cultural, including a historic, biblical understanding of marriage as part of broader convictions around human sexuality and gender. They serve diverse student bodies, and work to care for all students, as the institutions seek for them to believe and feel that they are created in the image of God and therefore possess full dignity, value, and worth.

It is out of these convictions that TIU adopted the following board-approved Human Sexuality Statement in July 2023:

As an institution entrusted with the gospel...

…we celebrate the good news that God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. We give thanks to God that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. As those who have received God’s grace and forgiveness, we desire to share God’s grace and to live faithfully in accord with the mission and core values of Trinity International University. We seek to live and relate to one another and to engage the culture in a Christ-honoring way, practicing convictional kindness and convictional civility. In that light we affirm the following statement.

• This policy, drawn from Scripture as our ultimate authority, sets forth a Christian vision of human sexuality as a good gift of God. The divine design for sexual expression within the commitment of marriage between a man and a woman is fundamental to the well-ordering of human society and is integral to human flourishing. The divine design is fidelity within marriage and celibacy for all outside of that bond. We desire to articulate this ethic as moral truth binding on us all while recognizing our need of God’s grace and forgiveness in the ways that we all fall short of this divine ideal. Co-habitation, polygamy, and same -sex marriage all fall short of the divine design.

• We in the Trinity Community regard marriage as a good creation of God, and marriage within the Church as a rite and institution tied directly to our foundational belief of God as Creator who made us male and female. We also regard marriage as a sacred institution which images the mysterious and wonderful bond between Christ and his Church. To us, then, marriage is much more than merely a contract between two persons (a secular notion). It is a covenant grounded in promises between a man and a woman that finds its divinely intended expression in the “one flesh” union of husband and wife, and between the “one flesh” union of husband and wife and God (the divine design). We therefore will only authorize and recognize heterosexual marriages.

• Recognizing the Trinity Community as a family, we will seek ways to encourage deep spiritual relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ, with a special effort to include those who are single. We in the Trinity Community will model the counter-cultural reality that intimate, loving relationships need not be erotic.

• In addition, we affirm that God’s creation of human beings as male and female provides a biologically-sexed identity grounded in God’s good design. Because Scripture teaches that human beings are embodied creatures–a unity of soul and body1–this sexual difference ought to be properly recognized and valued in ways that honor God’s purposes for marriage, family, friendships, and the church.

• Because we live in a world marred by sin that leaves no one and nothing untouched, we acknowledge that we may experience desires toward others and feelings about ourselves that do not accord with the goodness of God’s purpose in creating human beings as male and female. Because our sexuality and its social expression are so integral to human identity, we should also expect that these desires and feelings may seem deeply ingrained. Nevertheless, Scripture teaches that we honor God’s gift of sexed difference and experience true freedom by seeking to conform our desires and feelings to God’s purposes. In submitting to the means of grace God has given, such as meditation on Scripture, patient prayer, and life together in the church, he sustains his people even in the struggles of this life.

• Our affirmation of God’s design in creating us male and female means that we cannot support or affirm attempts to resolve the tension between a person’s biological sex and their feelings by trying to promote a sense of self discordant with their biological sex, nor can we support or affirm the use of pharmacology or surgery to manipulate sexual characteristics to create the outward impression of the opposite sex or of an indeterminate appearance.2

• At the same time, the Bible demands that we extend love and compassion to those whose sexual self-understanding is shaped by a distressing conflict between the givenness of their biological sex and the confusion of their feelings about sexual identity.3 This conflict can create immense pain which calls for sensitive pastoral care. The gospel offers us the hope of transformation but not the promise that this transformation will be fully resolved until our bodies are transformed through resurrection when Christ returns. In the meantime, we must not minimize the inestimable value of knowing what is real and good and the vital importance of submitting our lives to the truth revealed in Scripture, even when doing so will be and
  feel costly. And we must seek ways to minister to and support those who struggle with gender confusion, and those who have family members or others close to them who identify as LGBTQ+.

1 This holistic view of humanity is demonstrated most clearly in the fact that to become a human being the Son of God had to assume a human soul and a human body.

2 We recognize that intersex conditions (or disorders of sexual development) exist in which the development of phenotypic and genotypic sex characteristics deviate from standard biological development. While statistically rare, we also recognize the importance of carefully considering them. Treatment (including non-intervention) of these disorders differs categorically from transgender interventions, which are performed on persons with no inherent variability in sex organ development, function, or fertility.

3 This human condition is described psychiatrically as gender dysphoria, i.e., gender distress.