John Trinklein ’24, was hoping to become a forensic accountant and lead a comfortable, prosperous life, but his family’s experience on the mission field — and his mother’s own health emergency — helped prompt him toward a new path in ministry.
“[Initially,] I wanted to make money and live a good life according to my standards. But it did not feel good,” the Concordia pre-seminary theological studies major says. “Now I would love to serve overseas, especially at a place where I can let people hear the Word of God for the first time. I’m willing to go wherever.”
Trinklein, the son of a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor, grew up in southern Illinois on a church property where stood a church building, a parsonage, a fellowship hall and a graveyard, all surrounded by cornfields.
“It was a sweet place to grow up,” he says of his home for 14 years.
His father had left a career as a certified public accountant to enter full-time ministry, and received a call to serve with the Office of International Mission in Korea to help train pastors at Lutheran seminaries there. The Trinkleins moved from their Midwestern town of 1,200 people to a high-rise apartment in a city of millions near Seoul.
“It was a huge change,” John says. “But my siblings were such a blessing. My brother and I got super-close during our time in Korea because that was who we had.”
The homeschooled foursome, of which John is the youngest, blessed churches and gatherings as a string quartet. John also felt a strong sense of community with the Koreans at Oksudong (Saint Luke’s) Lutheran Church, in spite of the fact that they didn’t speak each others’ languages.
“We shared the love of Christ and the truth of Christ crucified for us,” he says. “That was true fellowship for me.”
But a few years into their overseas ministry, John’s mother, Gretchen, suddenly developed fast-growing brain tumors.
“It was such a shock,” John says. “We had no history of cancer in our family.”
Emergency surgery removed the tumors, but the family had to return to the U.S. in early 2021 for visa requirements and for Gretchen’s medical treatments. At the time, John was taking online college courses to become a forensic accountant, but the choice of subjects didn’t sit well with him.
“I was taking business statistics and marketing, but my heart was dying,” he recalls.
He took a gap semester to think it through, and that summer Pastor Jeff Schrank at Christ Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where the family was living, took John and his brother under his wing. They began to serve daily at the church.
“It was work that meant something and wasn’t for myself,” John says. “There’s no greater feeling than serving — mopping floors, distributing food for the drive-through food bank, doing landscaping for shut-ins, handing out food to homeless encampments in downtown Phoenix.”
His own grandfather has served at the church for more than 40 years. One day, in the midst of a task, another volunteer began talking to John about how much she enjoyed studying at Concordia and digging into the Scriptures with her professors.
“I was like, ‘I want to do something like that,’” John says.
He mentioned it to Pastor Schrank, and his response was immediate: “You should go to Irvine.”
So Trinklein did, enrolling in fall 2021 as a sophomore transfer. His first classroom experience of any kind was in Concordia’s doctrine and confession class.
“It was amazing,” he says. “We could ask questions of professors and have conversations after classes. Everyone wanted to learn just as much as I did about doctrine and Scripture. It inspired me.”
He quickly joined the orchestra and switched from violin to viola. He also became global missions coordinator in Concordia’s university discipleship program, helping to organize mission trips and gatherings.
Meanwhile, his mother’s health deteriorated steadily. She recovered from a second, unplanned brain surgery, but Covid rules limited visitors to one at a time, and that was typically John’s father. With Gretchen’s encouragement, John continued to study at Concordia, helping to organize and host the Beautiful Feet missions conference, a joint effort of all Concordia Universities, and leading several activities for a mission trip to a Lutheran church on a Navajo reservation. Those mission trips placed in his heart the imperative to lay down his life and go where others might not be willing to go.
“There’s no greater feeling than serving — mopping floors, distributing food for the drive-through food bank, doing landscaping for shut- ins, handing out food to homeless encampments in downtown Phoenix.”
In early 2022, Gretchen suffered hemorrhaging of the brain, and John rushed home to be with her.
“I went to Dr. Loy’s office, dean of Christ College, and he said I could drop every responsibility I had at school,” John says. “Friends supported me. I got emails from professors telling me they were praying for me and my family. It was amazing that they cared about me. The community God has given me here has been such a blessing.”
Gretchen’s condition worsened, and in June 2022 she went to be with the Lord.
The family buried her in Illinois, in the graveyard on the church property where they had lived.
“It hurts my heart, but God has used it so much,” John says. “She was a blessing to me and to so many other people, even in her suffering and trial. God has used that to encourage me. She is an example of faith to me.”
Today, John’s father Hans teaches accounting and theology at Concordia University Nebraska, and John, who graduates in May, hopes to go overseas one day, perhaps to serve as a Bible translator.