HCJB World Radio is celebrating the life of Robert "Bob" Neff who served with the Moody Broadcasting Network (MBN) in Chicago for 40 years, the last 31 of those as head of the network after he became Moody Bible Institute's vice president of broadcasting in 1974.

Neff died in Chicago after a courageous battle with ALS (also called Lou Gehrig's disease) on Friday, April 21, about a year after health concerns forced him to resign from Moody.

When he took the helm of MBN, it comprised just three owned-and-operated stations. Under Neff's leadership this number expanded to 35. In 1982 he helped pioneer the groundbreaking satellite delivery of MBN programming, now serving more than 400 affiliate stations and outlets nationwide.

In the last 10 years of his leadership, Neff advanced the globalization of Christian radio through strategic partnerships with HCJB World Radio, the Buckner Foundation, Romania's Radio Voice of the Gospel (RVG) network and others.

He served on HCJB World Radio's board of trustees for 4½ years before stepping down in January 2005 due to health concerns, but he maintained a close relationship with the organization until his death.

"What impressed me most about Bob is that he was someone who directed a major ministry in the U.S. with a long tenure, yet he had a freshness and interest in what God was doing around the world in a way that few people have," said HCJB World Radio President Dave Johnson.

"Bob was not content with the status quo," he says. "He wanted to be involved where God was moving today. He wanted to touch and feel whatever he was committing himself to. He's one of our few board members who actually traveled to most of HCJB World Radio's regions and talked with each regional director personally. He asked the hard questions, but always with a spirit of love and a 'can-do' attitude."

Johnson added that Neff was a "real family man and mentor at heart. His involvement at Moody in the training of Christian broadcasters from around the world was an outcome of a desire to see people equipped to do the job well."

He caught the vision of assisting international broadcasters in the mid-1990s when Moody began receiving many requests for help in setting up Christian radio stations in their countries.

"We didn't know how to respond to all the requests," Neff said in an interview last year. "The need was there, but rather than reinvent the wheel, I went to HCJB World Radio, knowing the mission was already working around the world in 'radio planting' and had a good perspective of the situation."

HCJB World Radio Chairman Ron Cline got to know Neff in the mid-1990s, not long after HCJB World Radio worked with local partners and the Romanian Missionary Society to launch the RVG network, now broadcasting on eight stations in that country.

Neff then began facilitating the training of Romanian broadcasters at Moody "This started us on a long journey of helping radio stations together around the world," Cline says. "Bob's agenda to help was simple, pure and terrific . . . to help!" In recent years students have come to Moody from places such as Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Turkey, Spain, Australia and South America.

Neff was instrumental in setting up a program to encourage small upstart Christian radio stations worldwide. "We decided that we would design criteria and then see what stations were growing and doing the job," Cline explains. "Then we would reward the top 25 stations with the Moody Broadcasting Certificate of Excellence which carried a $1,000 gift to use for further development of the station. All this was Bob's idea."

He also encouraged HCJB World Radio to create a fund to help finance the training of young national leaders. This led to scholarship program called the Bob Neff National Leadership Development Fund, launched at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in February 2005.

Most recently, two young church leaders from closed countries received scholarships to attend the Radio School of Mission operated by HCJB World Radio in Singapore March 29-April 5. Fourteen students from 10 countries in the Asia Pacific region took part in this course.

Dick Jacquin, HCJB World Radio's vice president of support ministries, saw Neff's passion for missions during their many travels together. "I'll never forget our time in Romania with the RVG station general managers who came from all across the country to spend some time with us, talking about leadership development, team building, fund-raising and staying close to God in difficult times," he recalls.

"Once, because our flight from Burkina Faso back to C?te d'Ivoire was canceled, we had to return to Abidjan via an old bus," Jacquin says. "That 30-hour ride was unbelievably wild, and we actually wondered if we would arrive alive! There were some pretty tense moments at numerous security checks at gunpoint and at a border crossing in the middle of the night when the two countries were on the brink of war. Then in the middle of nowhere a blown-out tire lifted the bus floor wide open just a few seats away from us!"

Jacquin described Neff as the "consummate ambassador of Christ, sharing His love and encouraging everyone he met. His love for ministry and Christ's servants was exhibited over and over both to me and our mission staff as well as our partners in ministry."

In 2005 Neff was a co-recipient of the NRB's William Ward Ayer Distinguished Service Award for "outstanding and significant contributions to the field of Christian communications." In addition, NRB recognized Moody's "Open Line" call-in program as "Best Radio Talk Show." This was one of the first programs created for Moody's groundbreaking satellite service that Neff helped launch.

WRNF, "Radio for the Heart of Reconciliation" in Selma, Ala., recently named the station in honor of Neff for his dedication to bridging barriers such as nationality, race and geography.

Neff is survived by his wife, Miriam (Hinds); four children, Valerie Hogan, John Neff, Charles Neff and Rob Neff; a son-in-law, Mark Hogan; daughters-in-law Lori Neff and Mia Neff; three grandsons, Albert, Edward and Edmond Hogan; his mother, Dorothy Neff; and sisters Rebecca Shelton and Barbara Caban.

A memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. Sunday, April 30, at Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, Ill. Memorial gifts may be sent to the WRNF Selma Project at P.O. Box 10, Selma, AL 36702.

Sources: HCJB World Radio, Moody Broadcasting Network