The Back to God Hour

The Great Depression had already stalled the Christian Reformed Church's plans for a media ministry once before its Synod appointed a Radio Committee to try again, and on December 17, 1939, the effort finally reached the air: the first broadcast of what became The Back to God Hour went out over WJJD, a 20,000 watt station in Chicago. Henry Schultze, a professor at Calvin College, served as its first speaker, though the ministry did not have the budget for a dedicated radio pastor until 1946, when Dr. Peter Eldersveld took the role and held it until his death in 1965, shaping the program's voice for nearly two decades. By the late 1940s more than 250 stations carried the broadcast.

The program ran under the name The Back to God Hour for seventy one years, from 1939 to 2010, expanding along the way into multilingual outreach that carried the Christian Reformed Church's preaching into Chinese, through Rev. Isaac Jen, and into Eastern Europe, through Rev. Sergei Sosedkin, alongside children's and Latin American programming under later hosts. In 2008 the organization renamed itself Back to God Ministries International to reflect work that had grown well past a single radio show, and in 2021 it became ReFrame Ministries, the name it carries today. Now based in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Burlington, Ontario, the ministry broadcasts in ten languages, an unbroken line running back to one Depression era radio committee and a Chicago transmitter.