Flagship Presentation: Embracing Flourish Freedom

It’s Paula’s passion, and she tailors her message to your event. While she can speak for fifteen minutes or fifteen days, her favorite way to share about flourishing freedom is in a four-part series at retreats and women’s conferences, where she encourages others to Awaken to God’s love, Become Rooted in the identity of Jesus, Bloom in good times and bad, and Flourish in freedom, letting go of shame and learning to live as vibrant daughters of the King.

PAULA’S PASSION STATEMENT:

Paula speaks to join with the Holy Spirit in setting captives free and healing the broken-hearted. She calls forth the true essence of life, person, and self and invites listeners into the grand Love Story with Jesus. (Paula has spoken at local, regional, and national venues. Click here for a list.)

The message of freedom is at the core of all of Paula’s presentations, no matter the specific topic or audience. Below are other titles designed to meet a specific need–in freedom! (More are available upon request, and Paula can tailor to your needs. Paula also teaches frequently on writing craft.)

Topics for Spiritual Nourishment

• Accepted, Secure, and Significant – Knowing our place in God’s heart has breath-taking, far-reaching consequences. Using a combination of teaching, contemplative prayer, and hands on activities, this teaching encourages believers to step into a secure place of identity in Christ.

• The Courage to Pursue Your Dreams– (This is too deep to be handled in an one or two hour workshop. It would need to be offered as a retreat or continuing session.) Find it hard to pursue your dreams? Or maybe you’ve taken the plunge, but rejection and lack of forward motion have you questioning your dream. Sometimes it’s success that knocks the breath out of us and holds us back in pursuing all God has for us. We need courage—and not just a gritting our teeth determination—but courage of the heart nestled in God’s arms.This workshop combines teaching with time for the attendees to participate in small group discussion and private prayer and journaling. It offers the following topics for the acronym of COURAGE:
  • C – Calling
  • O – Open Your Heart To God’s Probing And Prompting
  • U – Unleash Your Passion
  • R – Reject The Lies That Hold You Back & Rest In Truth For Your Journey
  • A – Accept The Identity God Gives You
  • G – Greet New Steps By Reaffirming Your Trust In God’s Hand And Heart
  • E – Empowered By The Holy Spirit

Topics or Moms/MOPS/Homeschoolers

Many of Paula’s mothering workshops are adapted to your groups’s specific needs. Unless otherwise noted, all of the following topics are available to homeschoolers as well as moms. Paula will add material specific to this segment of the mom population.

Heart Topics

• The Guilt-Free  Mom: We all have “bad”  days when the children fight, tasks are left unfinished, and the sink overflows with dirty dishes. But worse are the feelings of guilt and inadequacy that can lurk beneath the surface of a dedicated mom’s heart. Though we give tirelessly to our children, we too often doubt ourselves, getting lost in a sea of guilt, inadequacy, and “if onlys.” Paula will share hard-earned insights into this inner struggle and discuss how discovering God’s heart gave her a foundation to stand strong upon even with the bad days hit.

• A Gift for Moms: As busy moms seek to wrap the holidays in a pretty bow for their loved ones, perhaps there is a special gift just for them. Writer and speaker, Paula Moldenhauer, invites moms to join her in unwrapping a gift that came with the birth of Christ–a unique gift often lost in all our efforts to be the perfect mom. A gift that frees us to be the mom we dream of being and to enjoy it!

• The Adventure of Raising Boys: One boy equals one boy. Two boys in the same house equals four boys. Three boys (especially with no sister between them) equals 9 boys. If you think I can’t do math, think again. When you raise a bunch of boys together the amount of energy in your home is exponential. What’s a mom to do?

• A Case of the Enoughs: Have you caught that nasty mom disease, the Enoughs? Symptoms including struggling to breath as you wonder if you’re enough to meet your child’s need. Come and learn about this debilitating sickness, and discover the antidote.

• Unmasked: There’s nothing like the trenches of being with your kids 24/7 to bring out all that stuff we want to keep covered up. Here’s a bit of my journey of being unmasked—and how God healed me even as He undid me.

• Quiet Time Quandary: We’re told that Christians should spend time with God, just like the old children’s song, “if you read your Bible and pray every day, then you’ll grow, grow, grow” . . . but if you don’t . . . then you’ll “shrink, shrink, shrink.” But we moms sometimes barely find time to brush our teeth, much less linger in “quiet moments.” God’s given me a new perspective on the “quiet time” ritual I grew up with and as usual, it’s bubbling over with grace!

• Raising More Than Cookie Cutter Kids: When the kids were little I prayed they wouldn’t be pew warmer, cookie-cutter Christians. I wanted them to live a passionate adventure of faith, not a safe, institutional religion. Little did I know there would be times I wished they’d just “fit in” a little more . . .

• Fingerprints: Smudgy fingerprints leave oily marks on everything they touch, but what if God’s puts His Holy fingerprints into your heart, and teaches you to do the same for your children?

 Practical Topics

• Slurping the Soup, Saving the Cents – (For MOPS or other mom groups as well as homeschooling groups.) As a mom of three teenage boys I had to learn to fill those hollow legs without breaking the budget. This fun workshop talks about the art of soup-making, laughs about my foibles, and offers my tried and true recipes.

(Specific to Homeschoolers or Stay-at-Home Moms)

• Thankful for Togetherness: Ever have a little too much together time . . times when you want to see Norman Rockwell moments and instead it’s like watching a bad cartoon with big green monsters? Rediscover the gift of being together.

• My Kids Are Like Rottweiler’s While Theirs Are Like Golden Retrievers and Other Such Lies: Understanding God’s Unique Design for Your Child Every child is an amazing wonder shaped by the Master Creator. How can truly believing this truth–and teaching it to our children–help them become all He created them to be? In this workshop we’ll discuss how homeschooling allows a unique opportunity for children to discover their special, one-of-a kind, God-given design. We’ll also address letting go of the pressure to fit homeschool stereo-types and how God leads us to call forth our children’s gifts.

• Real Life Homeschool: I don’t know about you, but my real-life homeschooling is not what I thought it would be and nowhere near perfect. Reality can hit pretty hard, especially when I don’t live up to my own standards. Thankfully, real life is what God has in mind–and His ideas are way better than ours.

Topics for Writers

Writing Craft Workshops

• Framing a Solid Structure for Your Novel – How do you know if you’re building with straw instead of bricks? Don’t wait until someone huffs and puffs and blows your novel down. Lay the foundation of your story using tried and true methods such as GMC and Plot Skeleton. From there, you will learn how to employ the Hero’s Journey, framing your story until it can stand on its own and become habitable for your characters. Learn to build a house not even the big, bad wolf can blow down!
• Creating Believable Characters – Even the most thrilling adventure story is only as good as the characters who people it. Good characters, like good people, make us laugh, cry, grow, change, and fall in love. This workshop quickly covers the basics of character development then helps you go deeper to discover what makes your character tick—and your reader bond with your story.
• Deep POV: It’s a Head and Heart Thing – Much of modern fiction employs deep (or close) point of view to bring readers inside the character’s head and heart. Deep POV infuses the intimacy of first person into the third person POV experience. In this hand-ons workshop, author Paula Moldenhauer teaches techniques and tricks so you can write as if you are truly in your character’s skin. She also covers the philosophy of deep POV and when NOT to use it.

• Calling all Heroes (and Heroines) – What takes a romance from “how sweet” to something more that keeps readers thinking about your story? Contrary to popular belief romance isn’t (only) about chemistry and passionate kisses. Give more “buy-in” to your romance by creating heroes and heroines who call forth the true self in their beloved.

• Don’t Bungle the Basics! – Most people enter the business of writing with passion and God-given talent, but few make it in the industry without learning craft. When it comes to wordsmithing, a little knowledge can take you a long way. Discover simple techniques to clean-up the bunglings that detract from your content and make the editor look elsewhere.

• Humor and Holiness: An Irresistible Combination – Does God have a sense of humor? Ever wondered what God was thinking when he created the platypus? Have you watched a giraffe drink from a tub or seen a goony bird land? Humor is God’s gift in good times and bad. It is also an often overlooked key to unlocking the reader’s heart to receive God’s holiness. Emotion softens defenses and makes hard truth more palatable. In this class, we’ll discuss how humor works and study writing samples of those who’ve done it well. We’ll also help you discover your own Lucille Ball moments, and how to incorporate them into your novel. Humor and holiness is an irresistible combination.

I often co-teach writing workshops with author Kathleen E Kovach, consider having us as a team!

Writing Life Presentations

• Writing as an Act of Worship – Religious jargon or real life? Most Christians desire to write as an act of worship to God. But how do we grab hold of such an holy concept, embrace it within our hearts, and live it out in the daily grinding of word count, the delight of book contracts, and the darkness of rejection?

• A Writer’s Identity –  Are you brave enough to say, “I am a writer?” If so, did you struggle the first time you spoke those words out loud? Most writers struggle with grabbing hold of the writer’s identity, even after they’ve filled reams of paper with their words. How does identity affect us on the writing journey? What does God have to say about who you are? Finding peace with this concept can help you move forward as you become the writer you’re called to be.

•  Trusting God with Your Writing Journey – Following God through the twists, turns, disappointments, and surprises of the writing business can test your inner person. How do you know if you are supposed to hang on or hang it up? And how can you live in courageous pursuit of your writing dreams when there are so few guarantees? What does God say about your writing journey?

• Local Gardening: Plant, Grow, Sustain a Local Writing Group – A big fan of local writing groups, Paula Moldenhauer was part of the founding team of HIS Writers, the first ACFW chapter in Colorado. She now works at the state level encouraging local chapters and supporting writers seeking to establish a new chapter. This workshop is both practical and philosophical. If you know you’re called to help equip writers and have been wondering how to do it, this workshop is for you.

• The Courage to Pursue Your Writing Dreams– (this workshop is too deep to be handled in an one or two hour workshop. It would need to be offered as a continuing session or retreat.) Find it hard to say, “I am a writer?” Or maybe you’ve taken the plunge into the business, but rejection letters and lack of forward motion have you questioning your dream. Sometimes it’s success that knocks the breath out of us and holds us back in pursuing all God has for us in a writing career. We need courage—and not just a gritting our teeth determination—but courage of the heart nestled in God’s arms.This workshop combines teaching with time for the attendees to participate in small group discussion and private prayer and journaling. It offers the following topics for the acronym of COURAGE:
  • C – Calling
  • O – Open Your Heart To God’s Probing And Prompting
  • U – Unleash Your Passion
  • R – Reject The Lies That Hold You Back & Rest In Truth For Your Journey
  • A – Accept The Identity God Gives You
  • G – Greet New Steps By Reaffirming Your Trust In God’s Hand And Heart
  • E – Empowered By The Holy Spirit

 Have a specific topic you think is suited to Paula’s passions? Just ask. Paula will create workshops for your specific needs.