DNOW is a youth event (February 21-23) put on by the Cumberland Baptist Association and focused on discipleship and an opportunity to invite friends to hear the gospel of Jesus.

 There are 3 large group sessions with a speaker and band, and multiple small group sessions held in “host homes,” made up of trusted youth leaders and youth parents.  There is a theme for the weekend, and the sessions correspond to that theme.  This year, the theme is wrapped up in what is best described as our identity, with a tag word of “Restored.”  

Students will be equipped with the truth about their identity in Christ.  How they were created by God with intentionality, design and purpose.  Although there was perfection in the Garden of Eden, the disobedience of Adam and Eve believing the lie from the serpent brought brokenness, dysfunction, and death into the world.  Over two thousand years later, we feel the weight of brokenness, dysfunction and death in our society all around us.  Our students are faced with this harsh reality every day.  “Restored” will center around how God can redeem things that have been lost or broken.  Bring refreshing truth to lies that have been believed, and make clear a biblical worldview that has been challenged by the secular culture. 

Our speaker this year, Dr. Ryan Andrew Smith, is currently the pastor at Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  He got his Doctorate degree in Apologetics from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  His first 18 years as a pastor he was in a college town with students that would continually bring up this topic.  Out of his ministry at that church he was led to write a book called “Trust the Circle.”