The following post is by Shannon Rutherford, a member of CBF’s Current steering commitee, who lives in Baton Rouge, La.

Here I sit in my office thinking again about the Current retreat in February. Somewhere deep in my soul (probably near my splankna) there is a sigh. It isn’t the kind of sigh that comes in moments of dread or the moments we are forced to endure. No…it is the sweet sigh of relief and dare I say glad anticipation.

It has been two and a half years since I left the familiarity of “The Lone Star State” and journeyed to the unknown world of South Louisiana. In those two years I have learned to love LSU football, jambalaya, Mardi Gras, and a wonderful congregation who couldn’t tell me the six flags that flew over Texas if their salvation depended on it. I have also learned that ministry is a profession of giving away. We give our time in meetings and visits, we give our lives in celebrations and sorrows, and we give our knowledge of God through proclamation and teaching.

It is a discipline for me to balance giving away with receiving and renewing. The Current retreat is one place where this renewing and refreshing happens. College ministry in a congregation is made up of a fall packed full of events that leads straight into the business of the Advent season which rolls smack into the spring semester. Sometimes I hear my soul gasping for breath and grasping for a cool cup of water as my life slows to a brisk walk for a second between events.

During the Current retreat I have sat with my bucket before preachers/teachers as the words of living water poured forth, bucket by bucket filling the well of my soul. There I have found old friends and new who know what it is to carry the title of minister. From the first retreat where two friends and I drove from Waco to Atlanta (we were younger then) to this year in Orlando, the Current retreat offers the sweet gifts of refreshment and renewal in the midst of this wonderful calling known as ministry.