Biography
Arizona native Tim Boyle is a retired missionary to Japan. He holds MDiv and DMin degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary and a BS in physics from Arizona State University. From 1967 to 1968, Tim studied Japanese at the East-West Center in Hawaii and went on to serve as a short-term missionary on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island, where he met his wife, Juji. From 1976 to 1982, Tim was a Japanese language pastor at churches in California. He is a member of the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC).
Beginning in 1982, Tim and Juji were assigned, by a dual appointment of the UMC and the Presbyterian Church USA, to serve as missionaries in Japan. Their first assignment was to a rural church in Shintoku, Hokkaido. They went on to serve at the Tsukuba Christian Center in Tsukuba Science City for 21 years. Since 2007, they have lived in the Osaka-Kobe area, where Tim was first assigned to the Buraku Liberation Center and then to Kwansei Gakuin University.
Writing has long been part of Tim’s life. In 1994, he authored Bible Stories Hidden in Chinese Characters, a Japanese language book that explores “the origins of many Chinese characters and how their makeup fits in so beautifully with basic biblical truths.” An English version was released in 2001, under the title The Gospel Hidden in Chinese Characters. On behalf of Reasons to Believe, Tim has translated and published Japanese versions of The Creator and the Cosmos, Creation and Time, and The Genesis Question, and provided Japanese subtitles for Journey toward Creation (DVD).
Tim retired from missionary work in 2016. He continues to serve on the board of directors and handle communications with the Japanese branch of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He also maintains a bilingual website at www.konkyo.org, which includes numerous RTB-related articles translated into Japanese. Tim and Juji are the parents of two adult daughters, Lisa Megumi and Jennifer Mari.
