Blog

Dr. Joel Nederhood went to be with the LORD on December 2, 2025. I want to honor his career by remembering the pivotal role he played in leading and expanding the Back to God Hour, where we worked together for 34 years.

First, I will give background on the Back to God Hour (BTGH). To address religious and societal issues after World War I, many Protestant denominations and organizations aimed to use new media, such as radio, to spread the gospel of Christ across North America and eventually worldwide. The Lutheran Hour began broadcasting in 1930. The Back to God Hour started airing in 1939. The Back to the Bible radio ministry also launched in 1939, and Billy Graham’s The Hour of Decision debuted in 1950. To describe radio programs with similar goals, these organizations chose similar names that clearly conveyed their desire to reform the increasingly secular culture developing in American society during the 1930s and 1940s.

Dr. Peter Eldersveld became the first full-time radio minister at the BTGH in 1946. To help share the workload, the BTGH hired an associate pastor in 1960 to assist with listener follow-up, produce written content, and deliver weekly radio sermons for about three months each year.

In September, Classis Chicago South of the Christian Reformed Church, at its meeting at Bethel Church in Lansing, Illinois, ordained Dr. Nederhood as Associate Minister of the BTGH. More than 10 ministers participated in the solemn ceremony, including Dr. John Bavinck, who was his professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. The title of Dr. Nederhood’s thesis was The Church's Mission to the EDUCATED AMERICAN.

After Dr. Eldersveld’s sudden passing in late 1965, Dr. Nederhood took on the full-time role of English-language radio minister in addition to his existing duties. One of these duties was editing the Family Altar, a daily devotional booklet produced each month. (I translated 12 of these booklets into Arabic and distributed 50,000 copies to listeners in the Middle East.) Dr. Nederhood renamed the Family Altar to Today in 1971.

Another responsibility involved fundraising. Broadcasting on several hundred radio stations, including TransWorld Radio’s megawatt stations, required a substantial budget. Dr. Nederhood worked closely with Jerry Yonker to secure additional funds whenever strategic opportunities arose to expand the BTGH's reach.

Additionally, a key task in any media organization is working with a business manager responsible for contracts. Dr. Nederhood collaborated with Ralph Rozema, who served as an agent in the founding and expansion of the BTGH.

When Dr. Nederhood became director of ministries at the BTGH, we were already broadcasting sermons in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Rev. Juan Boonstra started the Spanish-language broadcast in 1965, and I began the Arabic-language broadcast in 1958. Under Dr. Nederhood’s leadership, the BTGH expanded its outreach to include Mandarin Chinese, French, Russian, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Japanese. Broadcasting in nine of the thirteen most spoken languages allowed us to reach more than 100 countries with the gospel message. Dr. Nederhood’s role was larger than Dr. Eldersveld’s because the BTGH had grown to include so many languages.

Besides tripling the number of broadcast languages, Dr. Nederhood also promoted another medium: television. In 1977, he launched Faith 20, an English-language TV program.

Dr. Nederhood also participated in many conferences, rallies, and graduation ceremonies throughout North America and around the world. For example, in 1980, when I was a delegate at the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in Nîmes, France, Dr. Nederhood was an invited speaker. He demonstrated a keen interest in outreach to the Soviet Union shortly before its fall, and thanks to one of the connections he established in Russia and Ukraine, my book The Bible and Islam was translated into Russian.

Dr. Nederhood and the Back to God Hour’s foreign-language ministers used mass communication to effectively spread the gospel clearly and unambiguously while working to fulfill the Great Commission:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

After Dr. Nederhood retired, the Back to God Hour was renamed Back to God Ministries International in 2008 and ReFrame Ministries in 2020.