Kevin Kompelien is the 17th president of Trinity.
Rev. Kevin Kompelien previously served as the president of the Evangelical Free Church of America for nine years, from 2015-2023. Before that time, he was the international leader for the Africa Division with ReachGlobal (the international mission of the EFCA) and a senior leader of the mission.
A graduate of TEDS (MDiv ’83), Kompelien served over twenty years as pastor of two EFCA churches. In addition, he served on the North Central District Board, chairing the church planting committee, and on the Central California District Board (now EFCA West). In June 2019, President Kompelien was presented with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. A native of Thief River Falls, MN, Kompelien and his wife Becky have been married for 42 years. They have four grown, married children and nine grandchildren.
Prior to joining the faculty at Trinity, Dr. Pao taught at Harvard University as a Teaching Fellow in the area of the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity. He has also served as a visiting professor at several institutions in Hong Kong, China, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Dr. Pao is also involved in several Bible translation projects, and he is currently serving as the New Testament editor of the Tien Dao Bible Commentary series and consulting editor of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series.
His publications include Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus (Mohr Siebeck/Baker, 2002), Thanksgiving: An Investigation of a Pauline Theme (InterVarsity, 2002), Early Christian Voices: In Texts, Traditions, and Symbols (coeditor, Brill, 2003), After Imperialism: Christian Identity in China and the Global Evangelical Movement (coeditor, Pickwick, 2011), Commentary on Colossians and Philemon (Zondervan, 2012), Ascent into Heaven in Luke-Acts: New Explorations of Luke’s Narrative Hinge (coeditor, Fortress, 2016), and 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus (Brill, 2023). He is currently working on a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for the Tyndale New Testament Commentary series. He has also published several works in Chinese, including a two-volume commentary on the Gospel of Luke (Tien Dao, 2008, 2009) and ten volumes in the Guides to Biblical Studies series (Tien Dao, 2015–).
He has contributed to a number of essay collections and reference works, including Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Baker, 2005), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (vol. 10; Zondervan, 2007), New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon, 2008), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament(Baker, 2007), The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary (Baker, 2012), The NIV Zondervan Study Bible (Zondervan, 2015), Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (de Gruyter, 2016), and Christian Higher Education: Teaching and Learning in the Evangelical Tradition (Crossway, 2018).