Songs for the Soul,

Hope for the Hurting... 

More than Music Inc.

Newsletter
 
 

Sept 2012

Latest News
Latest Press
Highlights & Prayers
From the Heart
Latest Press

Stephanie Pauline did an in-studio radio interview with Phil Kvamme of KCFB while in MN on tour. Listen to the interview here.

 

Click to to view articles that were featured in newspapers in NV and MN promoting Stephanie's tours.
Humboldt Sun

Calling all planning committee members and sponsors!  MtM will be partnering with Southern CO YFC to put on another benefit concert Spring 2013.  The wheels are just getting turnin' on this.  View last year's concert here!

  

Stephanie Pauline's music facebook page just took off, with over 5,000 "likes" so far and still counting.  See why, "like" her yourself and download a FREE copy of one of her songs! 

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Treasurers Corner
By Genny Moelling

 

Head Shot of GennyWhy do we support non-profits like More than Music? Because God is using this ministry to touch the hearts and lives of people in need. Because they are doing what we can't do, and they can't do what they do without us!

It is truly miraculous what has been accomplished through More than Music to date, given the size of this nonprofit. It is so clear to me that God has been behind the scenes; faithful to provide and multiplying the provision. As a team we have made sacrifices to serve our community, and many sacrifices have been made by our founder, Stephanie Pauline and by her family. Stephanie has worked more than full-time for many years and has waived her salary since this nonprofit was founded in 2003 to commit more funds to the work of MtM. That's the heart of the leadership of this work. We can do so much with so little! 

Realistically speaking, for More than Music, Inc. to move to the next level of service, we really need $1,700 a month in base donor support. We currently have a shortfall of $1,100 in committed monthly donations. Are you prompted to join with us?

 

Support & Donations Online: If you would like to help support the More Than Music Ministry and would like to make a secure tax deductible donation online through paypal you may do so by logging into your paypal account and sending your gift to [email protected].

Otherwise you may simply click on one of the three amounts below:

Via Check or Money Order: mail to More than Music Inc.
P.O. Box 31
Farmington, MN 55024.
 

Remember all gifts are tax deductible, and are very much appreciated. We do have monthly partnerships if you are interested in making a commitment to help support us monetarily.

Hi there!

I, Stephanie Pauline, am thankful to be able to send this to you today.  I am thankful for your support in reading this and keeping up with me and More than Music.  (I ran into several out and about on tour who actually, [gasp] read this newsletter I send out and found out about the concert they attended through this periodical.  :)  With a wink, I would jest-fully quip to each, "So YOU'RE the one who reads that thing!"  Truthfully, we are up to around 2,000 people now.  So thank you to those who have signed on to get this update from me and the More than Music team.)

Anyway, so much going on.  Check out the news from the last couple months in the highlights section and take a look at the upcoming events too!  Can't wait to see you at the next concert in your area! 
Digs on the Gigs

2012
Sat., Sept 8th Springs Central Church Colorado Springs, CO
2550 San Miguel St 80909
Doors open at 6:30/Concert @ 7 PM
$5.00 at the door. For advance will call ticketing call 719.439.3110
Stephanie will be sharing her story and more spiritual songs at this concert as she does in detention centers across the country.  If you haven't heard her share from her heart in this way before now is your chance!
  
WYOMING MINI TOUR
Thurs., October 18th - Sun., October 21st
Sun., October 21st North Hills Baptist Church
Doors open 6:00/Concert @ 6:30 PM.
..more dates and details to follow...
Stephanie will be mainly be sharing her story and spiritual songs for this tour.

Sat., Oct 27th House Concert (private)
Ute Pass Cultural Center 210 East Midland Ave, Woodland Park CO 80863
Doors open at 6:30/Concert @ 7 PM
$5.00 at the door/kids are free
Stephanie will be offering an eclectic blend of her country/folk music.  With guitarist Tim Collins.  Come for a fun, uplifting time.  With 2 openers (Cliff Letters, and another artist) this will be a great night.
 
Fri., Dec 7th Black Rose Acoustic Society - upstairs in The Perk series
2nd floor of Pikes Perk Coffee and Tea House
14th South Tejon Downtown Colorado Springs, CO
Doors open at 7:30/Concert @ 8 PM
$7.00 for general public/Black Rose members $4.00/Student $5
Stephanie will be offering the Christmas selections (original and classic carols) Tim Collins arranged with her off their new Christmas CD (WILL JUST BE COMING OUT) and some of her country/folk music as well. Come for a fun, uplifting time! This is sure to be a great night!

 

NEBRASKA MINI TOUR

Thurs., Dec., 13th - 16th
...dates and details to follow...

 

2013

Fri., January 18th Buffalo Grass Acoustic Society Concert 
Cowboy church of Peyton
15504 Bradshaw Rd Peyton, CO 80831
Concert @ 7 PM
$5.00 for general public/$3.00 for Buffalo Grass members/kids under 16 free
Stephanie will be offering an eclectic blend of her country/folk music. Stephanie will be playing piano and guitar along with her guitarist Tim Collins. Come for a fun, uplifting time.

Sat., Jan 26th Canon Rose Acoustic Society Concert

...details to come... Canon City, CO

Doors open at 6:00/Concert @ 7 PM

 

AR, NV, NM, & CA Tour

Feb 2013 Now booking - Call Joanna Springer with any leads and concert opportunities 720.989.6627 or e-mail her [email protected]

 

TENNESSEE and KENTUCKY MINI TOUR

April 2013  Now booking - CALL Joanna Springer with any leads and concert opportunities 720.989.6627 or e-mail her [email protected]

 

Fri., May 3rd 2013 Biannual Hope and Potential Concert

to benefit Southern CO Youth for Christ

Put on through a Partnership with More than Music Inc.

Woodmen Valley Chapel, Colorado Springs CO

Headlining artist to be announced in the following month

Doors open at 6 PM/Concert @ 7 PM

 

MINNESOTA Summer Concert Tour

July 2013 Now booking - Call Joanna Springer with any leads and concert opportunities 720.989.6627 or e-mail her [email protected]

Highlights and Prayers

 

 

  • More than Music, and Stephanie Pauline 
    has performed over 30 concerts and radio interviews in CO, NV, MN, and ND since May when the last newsletter was sent. Whew! Whether a casual park concert where Stephanie shared her more lighthearted folk/rock songs or church concerts where she taught, or shared her story and Christian songs many were moved.  Stephanie was thankful to get back to her home in CO in August and have some time to lay low and get her kids all ready for their school year.  Stephanie is blessed to be able to go on these tours with her husband and daughter and often her teenage son Trevor comes along as well. They have won fast friends all over this great country.  Thank you to all the fans and friends who showed up in force to make all these concerts successful.  Stephanie can't do what she does without YOU.
  •   
  • The test pilot location for our new Toy Soldier 1280 program launch in Nevada, The Nevada Youth Training Center, went off without a hitch.  The concert at the champion's church Elko Church of the Nazarene saw five mentors come forward to help run the Christ based Mentoring Program plan there in elko.  More than Music has long since invigorated mentoring programs in juvenile detention centers across the country, now we are initiating them.  Special thanks to our Elko Champion, Leslie Johnston, who has been chosen to spearhead the effort in that facility.  Please pray for her and for the young people who will be impacted through a simple offering of love, truth and relationship.  Pray that many more Champions all across the nation will come forward and join ranks with us in partnership with Youth for Christ as vanguards for this important operation.  God IS a father to the fatherless.  THESE are our generation's fatherless.  Over 80% of these incarcerated young people do not have fathers in their lives and of the 20% that do technically have fathers many of them are still emotionally absent due to drug and alcohol abuse.  It is our call and our great privilege to serve these who matter so much to His heart. 
  • Now back from touring Tim Collins, Jon Collins and Stephanie Pauline are back in the recording studio finishing up a BEAUTIFUL Christmas CD that should be wrapped and ready to go mid November.  It is a simple, classic, pure reflection of the story of Jesus' birth featuring both original and classic Christmas carols. They were inspired to record this after sharing in detention centers every Christmas season for years and finding that 90% of the young people in attendance have never even heard most of the Christian carols. This CD is going to be a must have for any Christmas music collection and a favored December MtM hand out at juvenile detention centers all around the US.

  • Last, a special thanks from Stephanie Pauline to Joanna Springer and Kathy Morford.  Your efforts in pulling all the concerts together this summer and masterfully managing the details involved in organizing all these events is a phenomenal support to me and to the work of More than Music.  Thank you for working so hard, for being so dependable, and for caring about this music and message.  You are both so gifted and SO VERY APPRECIATED.  Thank you!  
                                      

 

"From the Heart" by Stephanie Pauline

 ...hand to the plow...

 

Pic of Stephanie PaulineHave you ever had those days where you wake up and have a compulsion within you to do something of eternal worth?  Something that will last?  Something that somehow changes things forever?  The wayward teenager tags this need for immortality into cement or steel with spray paint leaving messages like "I Was Here." (I can remember vividly dangling from a basketball back board [because I was the smallest and easiest to lift] across from the police station with a spray paint can in my hand, three kids urgently and simultaneously rasping out what to spray, a gleam in my eye, a decision made, and then a message left that was far more nocuous than my example here.  Man, I was messed up.)  Athletes win their way to glory.  Artists try to create something unique that can garner the attention and respect of peers and plebeians.  Some businessmen try to buy their way and missionaries try to serve their way into fulfilling this need we all have for purpose, for weight, for eternity.


The conversation follows.  I've had it with myself and with others many times.  You know the one I'm talking about because I'm sure you've had it before too.  You are doubting the value of your work or someone close to you is.  You smile, offer a cup of tea, or coffee and go about reassuring yourself and/or them of the great contribution and purpose of your efforts, and life while inside you fear the worst.  It's all for nothing.  Like King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes late in his life while reflecting on all he had experienced, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom it." and he sums up everything with the repeated refrain throughout the text, "Everything is meaningless."


Well, King Solomon may have been the wisest man to ever live, but he was not wisdom incarnate.  Jesus, now Jesus was that.  In Luke 9:62 Jesus said, "One who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is of no use in the kingdom of God."  I thought this seemed awfully harsh when I first read it years ago.  Considering the man he is talking to is saying, "I want to follow you, but let me first go say goodbye to my family."  (paraphrase by me)  I mean what's wrong with that?  But then one day I was having this conversation with myself again.  You know the one.  Suddenly God brought those words into my heart and spoke them so clearly that my doubt dissipated like darkness in the light.  "One who puts their hand to the plow and looks back..."  Suddenly I realized I had missed the point.  From then on, albeit somewhat out of context, that verse means something different to me. 

 

I come from a long line of farmers.  My dad was a farmer's son who brags to this day that he could back up a tractor better than his dad at age 8.  My dad's dad was a farmer and I remember crawling up onto his lap when he sat for a spell up on the old, weathered, rusted out combine that stood (and stands to this day) where he last parked it beside the dilapidated barn.  There I would dream with him of when he used to use it on the prairies we now rent out to others' to farm.  My dad's dad's dad who I never met home-steaded the old farm in 1904 and was the first to lay claim in that county.  I have a picture of him standing proudly at the doorway to a mud shack he built.  My dad's dad's dad's dad was a farmer in Germany and my dad's mom's dad's dad was a farmer for a small family farm in Denmark before he came to America and settled in North Dakota too.  The point is - farming runs in my blood. 

 
In that moment that God spoke to my heart I suddenly realized that if you are trying to plow a field, the old fashioned way with an ox pulling ahead, and you are looking back surely you are doing so to evaluate whether the ruts you are digging into the ground are straight, and deep and adequate.  To make sure you are doing it "right."  But you see, if you do that then who is watching the front?  Who is steering?  What will happen?  Think about it...  When I was in cross country running and track (all conference, and awarded "most valuable runner" in 9th grade before my life imploded thank you very much) I learned quickly that looking to the side to see where others were only slowed me down and inevitably led me to involuntarily veer in the direction of my eyes.  You lose valuable time doing that and even a slight bit alters your race.  I quickly learned that my best was what I was after, and that I had to pour myself out whether I was in first or last place.  My only regret would come in not having given my all.  In the same way, when you look back as you plow, inevitably the plow veers and when you turn back to face forward - to face what is...you find yourself off course; the ruts meant for planting disturbed and sloppy.

 

It is human nature to try to look to see if we are making a difference.  If what we are giving matters at all.  Even if we are "right."  It's not a bad desire.  It is meant in part to motivate us towards something good, and to help us to reset our trajectory when we get off course.  However, ultimately, our purpose; our worth cannot rest in any of this.  If it does then our gift of our lives poured out will not be a gift at all - it will be a means to "get" our need met, our insecurity assuaged.  No.  we want to live from faith not fear.  To give from fullness not emptiness.  If I trust.  Really trust in God.  That He is enough.  That my life is in His hands.  That my future is in His hands.  That my worth is defined by who He says I Am and what He did for me not what I can do for Him. That my need is met in Him and that God has good plans for me I cannot even begin to imagine.  Well, if I believe that - suddenly my every move takes on a new quality and every breath is eternal.  My words are eternal.  My voice weaves eternity into the air with every song.  I can feel it.   

 

I have learned to say it this way: what happens after obedience is none of my affair.  Who can measure a wake?  Only God knows the chain of events that unfolds behind us as we walk through life.  Our goal needs only to be to honor what we feel God has called us to regardless of all the rest.  To truly give it our all.  We are not in charge of the harvest, but we must plow and we will plant.     

 

Solomon, well, he was a pretty smart guy...he said it this way.  "Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap."  Don't worry about tomorrow.  Don't get bogged down with yesterday.  TODAY is a day meant for eternity.  It's the only one we have.  TODAY do what you feel called to.  Do something of eternal value and don't worry about the outcome.  Give to give not to get.  And while you're at it give it your best.  The ultimate outcome is already secured for you in Christ.  It will be okay.  You are free to live from your heart.  As Paul says, "Let us run the race that is before us and never give up!"

 

 

 

In Closing                                                

Thank you for reading this.  Can't do what I do without you.  Thank you for your support for me, the music, and this work that is about so much More than Music.  We at More than Music will do what we can to give what we can with a hand to the plow and a focus on the right here right now.  God alone - the ultimate creator, can give the work of our hands and hearts the quality to bring something worthwhile to this world.  I leave my desire for that on the floor at Jesus' feet...I hope you can find faith to do the same. 

 

Love to you all, 

 

 


Stephanie Pauline
More than Music Inc. 

Booking and Promotions;  Joanna Springer

[email protected]

PR Manager; Kathy Morford

[email protected]

Administrative Director; Genny Moellring

 

In the past 5 years, More than Music has sponsored

over 60 free concerts in correctional facilities and chemical dependency centers,

as well as supported social service ministries by hosting benefit concerts for them;

raising over $40,000 net for other worthy causes just since 2010. 

Through this work, and through the multimedia produced and distributed through MtM,

ministries have been strengthened,  millions now have heard the message of hope and forgiveness

and lives have been transformed by Christ.