Your Network of Praise
Your Network of Praise, commonly known as YNOP, is a non-profit, listener-supported Christian radio network in the northern United States, based in Havre, Montana. It is owned by Hi-Line Radio Fellowship, named for the Hi-Line region of northern Montana through which the network first grew, and it broadcasts a mix of Christian music and teaching programmes from a variety of sources. Its original station, KXEI in Havre, began broadcasting on 28 July 1983.
From that small-town start on Montana's northern plains, the network has grown through owned stations, translators and affiliates to serve Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota and Nebraska, with its signals also reaching southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan in Canada. In 2020 it entered its largest market to date by purchasing a station in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Launch in Havre in 1983
The network's first station, KXEI in Havre, signed on on 28 July 1983. Havre is a small city on the Hi-Line, the corridor across northern Montana paralleled by the railway and highway near the Canadian border, and the fellowship that owns the network takes its name from that region. Montana broadcasting histories record KXEI at Havre among the new stations of 1983, signing on that July day as a Christian-oriented station.
KXEI remains the network's home station. The organisation's address is on First Street in Havre, and the station serves as the point of origin for a service that now reaches far beyond Hill County. The network's early growth was slow and regional, in keeping with a ministry funded entirely by its listeners in some of the most sparsely populated counties in the United States.
Growth Through Helena
The network's second major step came in the state capital. From 1991 to 1993, Hi-Line Radio Fellowship leased AM 680 in Helena, Montana, providing a temporary presence in the city until its own second station was ready. That station, 103.1 FM KVCM, then signed on in Helena, giving Your Network of Praise a permanent full-power home in the capital.
Helena became a second hub. In 2017, two additional stations in the Helena area were donated to Hi-Line Radio Fellowship: KBMI-FM and KHGC. Donated stations are a recurring feature of non-commercial Christian broadcasting, where owners transfer licences to ministries rather than sell them, and the gifts substantially deepened the fellowship's presence in central Montana without a purchase price.
Expansion Into Salt Lake City
In 2020, Hi-Line Radio Fellowship purchased AM 1320 KNIT in Salt Lake City for 200,000 dollars, giving Your Network of Praise a station in its largest market to date. KNIT is one of the oldest stations in Salt Lake City, established in 1922 under the call sign KDYL, and it carries the network's Christian format of music and teaching, with studios on South Murray Boulevard.
KNIT is a Class B AM station broadcasting with 730 watts from a transmitter on Pitchfork Lane in Murray, Utah, near Interstate 215, sharing its tower with KJJC. Its programming is also heard on FM translator K233DV at 94.5 MHz in Draper, Utah. For a network whose identity was built on small Montana towns, owning a century-old station in a metropolitan market of well over a million people represented a significant change of scale, extending YNOP's fundraising base and its audience at the same time.
Coverage Across the Northern Rockies and Plains
Today the network's availability spans Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska and North Dakota through its affiliates and translators, and its northern signals reach southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan. Station listings for the network include outlets and translators with call signs across that territory, from Montana communities such as Hardin, Scobey, Kalispell, Roundup, Colstrip, Columbus and Miles City to Williston in North Dakota.
That coverage pattern reflects the network's method: a core of owned full-power stations, supplemented by translators that carry the service into small communities across the northern Rockies and high plains. It is, by design, a rural network. Much of its territory consists of towns where a Christian radio service arrives only because a translator rebroadcasts it, and where the nearest owned station may be hours away by road.
Programming and Affiliations
Your Network of Praise broadcasts a mix of music and Christian programmes from a variety of sources rather than producing a single in-house schedule. It is affiliated with Moody Radio and with the Salem Radio Network, two of the largest suppliers of Christian teaching programming in the United States, and those affiliations shape much of its spoken-word content.
National religious leaders heard on the network include David Jeremiah, Joni Eareckson Tada, Chuck Swindoll and Jim Daly. Around those teaching programmes the network schedules Christian music, and it holds periodic on-air fundraisers to support its ministry. The network describes its service as completely commercial-free, because its entire annual budget is funded by donations from its listening audience. Its public identity is summed up in the phrases it uses for itself, including reaching families and changing lives, and, in its streaming descriptions, loving God and loving others.
Ownership and the Listener-Supported Model
The network is owned by Hi-Line Radio Fellowship, a non-profit organisation based in Havre. Its stations, translators and purchases have all been assembled under that single fellowship, from the original KXEI licence through the Helena donations of 2017 and the Salt Lake City purchase of 2020. The fellowship's name preserves the network's geography: the Hi-Line is where it began and where its headquarters remain, even as its largest station now sits in Utah.
Listener support is not a supplement to the model; it is the model. YNOP carries no commercials, raises its budget through donations and on-air appeals, and presents that relationship directly to its audience. For small-market Christian networks, that structure has practical consequences: programming decisions answer to donors and listeners rather than advertisers, and expansion depends on gifts of stations and money, exactly the pattern visible in the network's Helena donations and its modestly priced Salt Lake City acquisition.
Beyond Broadcasting: International Ministry
The network's activities extend beyond its transmitters. Its website promotes YNOP International Ministries and International Evangelism Outreach, including an appeal to help reach the people of Tanzania, inviting listeners to take part in evangelistic work far from the network's Montana base. That international strand is presented as an extension of the same mission as its broadcasting: listeners who fund the network at home are invited to support outreach abroad.
Such partnerships are characteristic of regional American Christian broadcasters, whose audiences are local but whose ministries often connect to missions work in other countries. In YNOP's case the contrast is especially marked, between a home territory of small towns on the northern plains and an outreach focus in East Africa.
Digital Presence
Your Network of Praise streams its programming live through its website at ynop.org, making the network available to listeners outside its terrestrial footprint. Streaming listings describe it as a non-profit Christian network ministering to Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota and Utah, and its service is carried by online radio directories and streaming platforms alongside its FM and AM signals.
For a network built from translators, streaming solves the same problem in a different way. A listener in a valley no translator reaches, or a former Montana resident living elsewhere, can hear the identical service without any transmitter at all, while the fellowship's fundraising appeals reach supporters wherever they have moved.
Significance
Your Network of Praise illustrates how a very small beginning can produce a durable regional institution. A single station in Havre, a town of fewer than ten thousand people, signing on in July 1983, grew into a network spanning six states and reaching into Canada, assembled through leases, donations, translators and one strategic purchase in Salt Lake City. Owned throughout by the Hi-Line Radio Fellowship and funded entirely by its listeners, YNOP remains rooted in the northern plains communities it was created to serve, even as streaming and its Utah station carry its name well beyond the Hi-Line.
