Joy99 Honors Life and Legacy of Les Lanser
Les Lanser went home to be with his Lord on July 30, 2026.
For 58 years, Les gave his life to a radio signal and the people on the other end of it. He came to the station as a young man and never really left. He worked here for 58 years. He owned it for 43. And in all that time, the mission never drifted: use every watt to point people to Jesus.
A Signal Worth Betting On
In January of 1987, Les made a decision a lot of people in the industry thought was a gamble. Contemporary Christian music was still finding its footing — an unproven format in a crowded market. Les went all in anyway.
He wasn’t chasing a trend. He believed West Michigan deserved a station where a mom driving her kids to school, a guy working second shift, and a college student in a rough season could all hear the same thing: you are not alone, and God has not forgotten you.
If you want to understand why that mattered so much to him, read Romans 8:28-39. Those were Les’s life verses, and he returned to them constantly — the promise that God works all things together for good, that nothing in all creation can separate us from His love.
Les didn’t just believe that passage. He spent 58 years building a way to broadcast it.
He Told Everybody
If you knew Les at all, you knew this about him: he could not keep the Good News to himself.
He shared the gospel with staff and sponsors, with listeners who called in and strangers in the checkout line. And — famously — with anyone who made the mistake of knocking on his door.
The Way He Ran a Station
Les understood something easy to say and hard to live: the stations were never the point. They were the instrument. Ratings mattered because reach mattered. Revenue mattered because it kept the signal up. But the scoreboard he actually watched was the one no ratings book measures — the listener who called to say a song kept them going, the person who prayed for the first time in a parked car in a grocery store lot.
He believed the work was holy, and he treated it that way for 58 years.
Carrying It Forward
We are forever grateful for Les’s life, and for the legacy he leaves in our hands.
The mission he gave everything to doesn’t end today. It continues every morning the transmitter comes on. We will keep bringing encouragement and the love of Jesus to this community, because that is the assignment Les handed us.
And we’ll keep telling people what Les told anyone who would listen — and plenty who only came to sell him something:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8:38-39
Les is not separated from that love today. He is home in it.
— The Joy99 and JoyWorship Family
