I’m excited about the Orange Conference coming up this Wednesday through Friday.

If you haven’t heard, the Orange Conference is a conference developed around challenging church leaders in “what it means and what it takes to reach the next generation. It’s the only place that a senior pastor, student pastor, children’s pastor and volunteers that work within these ministries can learn together and begin formulating a strategy to impact the lives of the people in [their] congregation”.

Over the course of 3 days, influential leaders and pastors will be speaking during various sessions throughout the  conference. Some of these speakers include Reggie Joiner, Francis Chan, Perry Noble, Nancy Beach, Jeff Henderson, David Kinnaman, and others.

I’m really looking forward to sitting in on some of the sessions. Excited about the content and the fact that I have an opportunity to serve in the conference…

I was invited to sing lead and backup during one of the sessions as well as run Keynote during some of the breakout sessions.

I’m so pumped!

Just heard the news that Ashton Kutcher won the Twitter Challenge against CNN earlier this morning.

If you haven’t heard, here’s the update…

This whole thing started with a web video by Ashton challenging CNN to a race to 1 million Twitter followers. Here’s the catch though, if he won, he promised to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day. CNN committed to match that donation regardless if they won or not.

At around 2am this morning, Ashton hit his 1 millionth follower and he threw a party, streaming it live on video.

But here’s what’s so cool. Oprah Winfrey has now jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. She set up her official Twitter account today. Before she was able to post her first tweet, she had reached 73,000 followers.

Talk about the power of social media!

You can find further info here.

Check out what Oprah had to say about the challenge from The Oprah Winfrey show that aired today…

Isaiah 53:3-6

3. He was despised and rejected—

a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.

He was despised, and we did not care.

4. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;

it was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,

a punishment for his own sins! [...more]