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HELP THE VISION TAKE SHAPE
Every couple deserves a sacred space for rest — and you can help build it.
Every contribution, workday, and early reservation brings Christ on the River closer to welcoming ministry couples in need of renewal.
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Email us to get involved — we’ll personally connect you with the most meaningful way to give, serve, or reserve.
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WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW?
The groundwork has begun — this is where your help makes a real difference.
The PreFabBarn serves as our workshop and mentoring hub, where tools are organized, materials are prepared, and designs by Frank Lloyd Wright–trained architect James Schildroth are being readied for fabrication.
Real men are showing up for #MENtoring workdays — clearing trails, repairing structures, sorting materials, and preparing for construction. Between work sprints, we mentor one another through the same principles we teach to couples— the frameworks of Dare to Be Different, Conversational Christianity, and Words as Windows.
This is not theory — it’s practice. Every gift of time, tools, or funds helps move this first phase — bringing us closer to welcoming our first ministry couples.
Join the next #MENtoring workday —
where believing meets becoming.
HOW IT WORKS: A Proven Experience Gets a Home
Christ on the River is being built to change all that. Every contribution, workday, and early reservation helps create a permanent home for this same life-giving work — a place designed for rest, renewal, and reconnection. Here, the setting will finally match the heart behind it.
Interested in helping build Christ on the River? Email us — we’ll personally connect you with the most effective way to give, serve, or reserve.
We already offer experiences that help couples heal, rebuild trust, and reconnect with purpose. Until now, these gatherings have taken place in borrowed spaces — hotels too busy, lodges too loud, and camps never meant for intimacy.
IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES
Picture a place built for peace — where couples rest, talk, and rediscover one another without distraction.
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That’s what Christ on the River will offer once the cabins are built and the fires are lit. Every hour of volunteer work and every dollar contributed now helps bring that day closer.
Until then, we continue leading mentoring experiences that renew marriages and strengthen faith — waiting for the day those same experiences can happen in a place built for this purpose.
And here’s how that vision begins to take tangible form:
one stay, one gift, one couple at a time.
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OUR STORY
We didn’t plan this. We inherited it.
Christ on the River traces its roots to a ministry retreat begun by Edith and Francis Schaeffer in Switzerland in 1955. Decades later, it found new life in the hands of mentors who poured into us when our own marriage and ministry were under strain. When those mentors could no longer continue, they entrusted the retreat to us.
We’re not building this because we have it all together—we’re building it because we know what it’s like to fall apart and find grace again.
We show you our scars so you can face yours, too.​​
Read our fuller story ⟶
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BOOK A STAY, GIVE A STAY (Vision in Motion)​
Transform Your Getaway into a Gift
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The “Book a Stay, Give a Stay” vision began with a simple commitment: for every future paid night at Christ on the River, a ministry couple in need will receive a night of rest — free of charge.
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We’ve already started living this pattern through our own giving, and we invite you to help expand it. Each contribution, workday, or early reservation moves us closer to the day when every stay blesses two households — one finding rest, and one serving others.
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Email us to learn how your partnership can help make that possible.​
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OUR FULLER STORY
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When ministry drains your marriage, it doesn’t mean you failed — it means you gave everything you had.
We didn’t plan Christ on the River. We inherited it — the way you inherit a calling you didn’t expect but can’t ignore."​​
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Christ on the River traces its roots to a legacy of healing hospitality that began in 1955, when Edith and Francis Schaeffer opened their home in Switzerland to weary believers. That ministry later inspired the Ministers’ Connection Retreat, founded by Charles Siburt and Paul Faulkner at Abilene Christian University and later entrusted to Dr. Randy Willingham — one of Jeff’s longtime mentors.
On September 11, 2001, Jeff prayed to be more useful than chasing a music career that left little room for God. Two years later, he and friends sang in a maximum-security prison for over three hundred men — beginning a twenty-year season of mentoring difficult men in hard places and learning what grace really costs.
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Cindy has spent decades strengthening homes — mentoring teachers, nurturing children, and guiding mothers in need. Her calm presence and quiet strength have helped hundreds of families find peace through seasons of strain.​
​A wreck in July 2018 broke Jeff’s body, injured his mind, and silenced his music for years. Cindy became his nurse, his advocate, and his hope. Together they faced the loss of a ministry they once thought would define them — and discovered that love, not position, was their true calling.
Then came the inheritance. When Jeff reached out to Randy, hoping to revisit the retreat that once restored their marriage, Randy handed them the retreat itself — a legacy stretching back through decades of ministry renewal.
What began as a lifeline became a legacy. The retreat that once healed them is now the one they’re rebuilding for others — because every ministry couple deserves a place to rest, receive renewal, and remember their “yes.”
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So if you’re tired, uncertain, or wondering whether the calling still fits — we're building this place for you.
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We’re not experts talking theory—we’re survivors rebuilding from scar tissue, creating the kind of refuge that once rescued us.
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— Jeff & Cindy Kreh
Vision Stewards | Christ on the River
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