Tom Boogaart

When I was still a relatively young professor, I played on the seminary basketball team. In the second game of the season, I planted my left foot and made a hard cut toward the basket. My foot slipped on a…

The man wore a blazing-yellow shirt open at his chest. With thumbs hooked into the pockets of his black pants, he addressed a group of teachers from seminaries in the United States and Canada. He was born somewhere north of…

A few years ago, a woman from West Michigan, Rachel, traveled to southern Mexico in order to teach music and English in the tiny village of Berriozabal, not far from the larger but hardly better known village of Tuxtle. The…

By Tom Boogaart I am coming to the end of a long teaching career at Western Theological Seminary and beginning to sort through the piles of notes, lectures, sermons, and essays that have accumulated over the years, much of the…

By Tom Boogaart In chapter 12 of the Gospel of John, Jesus announces, “The hour has come...” (23), and with these words the focus of the Gospel shifts. Knowing that his hour of death is near, Jesus turns his attention to…

by Tom Boogaart In late November my wife Judy and I took our three young granddaughters on a walk, and we passed by a crèche that had been set up in a park near our cottage. It consisted of large,…

By Tom Boogaart A few years ago, an historic Reformed Church was celebrating its sesquicentennial and inviting various people to come and talk about the history and future of the Reformed tradition. I was invited to talk about the sacrament…

By Tom Boogaart My house once had a carefully designed garden. Azaleas, rhododendrons, hostas, a dogwood tree, a rose of Sharon bush, and evergreen shrubs, all in appropriate places. When my wife Judy and I bought the house, however, the garden…

By Tom Boogaart Both of my parents died in late winter of this year, and we committed their bodies to the ground: a real committal service. No hiding the hole in the ground and no covering the dirt with green astro-turf,…

by Tom Boogaart The street that links my house and Western Seminary is called College. For thirty years now I have walked it up and down. I know each crack in the sidewalk. I’ve watched cement being poured for driveways,…