This is 5 years in the making, which is not really extraordinarily long, in the grand scheme of stewarding sacred stories outside of the “typical” industry framework. The story behind the 2026 Oscar-nominated animated short film, “Forevergreen”, took six years and was completely created in good will by two Disney animators and their friends who helped out in-kind to create it.

They didn’t win the Oscars (but was in many film festivals!) and from what I gather, they are just relieved they stewarded and finished it very, very well.

A 12-minute “Disney” short film in six years: It’d fall short by industry timeline and standards by all counts — no Oscar statue, not profiting, then, why?

It’s the upside-down Kingdom.

We made Breath, just as we made Dirty Laundry, with a simpler vision to have a sacred space for Kingdom-minded creatives to make something together.

It’s about an experiencing and giving into the practice of a sacred community.

When I first verbalized this idea in 2018, there was hardly any resonance to just be in community to make something sacred with the talents in our hands.

“Why don’t you build a YouTube channel?” (Been there, done that.)

“If you don’t monetize, where do you get the money?” (He provided.)

“What about quitting your job for this?” (Serial tentmaker I suppose?)

That truly I had no real idea what I was building until 7 years later.

And if you are building something sacred, too, I learned the importance of building slowly is to build in lockstep with His sacred directives, where it’s first (and always) for our formation — which has no short cuts.

Rather than assuming there’s an endless future and buried in an infinite loop, I have found it useful to synthesize the building journey in 5-year blocks in evaluating milestones and re-evaluating vision (as healthy things grow).

2018-2023 | The first five years: The MVP and Beta

We filmed the MVP ‘Dirty Laundry’ in Dec 2018 and then ‘Breath’ exactly three years after in 2021. Eight Parables financed both productions: all the flights, lodgings and food, etc, for majority of the crew who had put their hand up to take time to come out to SF for a weekend of filmmaking.

It was like a “short-term filmmaking missions trip!” The crew alluded to it.

In between the two productions, we got to screen ‘Dirty Laundry’ at several film festivals while also gathering the crew to celebrate and build community.

Most of them came back to serve as crew for ‘Breath’ as well. Not only that, they had organically built a tight-knit friendship group amongst themselves.

In Dec 2022, we had the opportunity to experiment our first parabolic short doc, Untamable, that was just published on this space too. This format was different in the approach of developing someone’s unscripted story with our original creative vision vs. working on our own original scripted short films.

And this would lead to the beginning of the paradigm shift for Eight Parables.

2023-Present | The next five years: Officially 0 → 1

2023 was a year of deep spiritual rebirth for me, and therein a needed hiatus. In both my life and in building Eight Parables, there is pre-2023 and post-2023.

By 2024, we were ready to take ‘Breath’ on the film festival circuit. It hit the shores of Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and of course at home here in America. As written in my founder letter this January, the pivotal journey of taking Eight Parables through Missional Labs from Fall 2024 to Spring 2025 then gave clarity to what and how to keep building from here.

In 2025, I began experimenting innovative ways of partnerships to cement the vision of a parable short film incubator (read more in our 2025 in review and keep an eye out on The Portfolio for what’s coming out and when). I am then planning to take a bit of a personal hiatus from this Summer, while Eight Parables will keep building slowly and transitioning into Fourthly.

Fourthly is our flagship film incubator: an experimental fourth space for artists and creatives — the sage, the seeker and the sojourner to pilot a global collection of parabolic short films like an artful ode to living true to a flourishing life.

That by 2028 or the end of this 5-year cycle, if I can raise a sizable fund to co-invest in Fourthly to incubate another 5-7 short films that are in development now or are in partnership discussions. Otherwise, with our current patronage model, we are likely to still continue to finance one parabolic short film a year while building catalytic communities in tandem.

We will find out. Time will tell.

What has been very encouraging though is last month, I got to present a Lab at Renaissance Movement’s conference at my church in San Francisco, and it was clear the resonance for all these that I hadn’t had back in the first cycle.

In building slowly, I also learned, timing is everything and how there is time.

The theme of the conference, 'Spark your creative soul’, was deeply felt; I will share more about this in my next Founder Letter publishing here in May.

Until then, we hope you will grab some wine and crackers for a contemplative time watching ‘Breath’ with your friends and family this Holy Week.

“But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” — Dead Poets Society, 1989

January 2026

2025 was seven years into Eight Parables and an immensely clarifying year, which would underpin moving our .com to Substack, where I will publish “a letter from the founder” each month on this space to document the journey in light of the new era of art patronage we exist for especially.

This is the first letter; where I reflect on our journey to vision cast our 2026.

In December 2018, a vision for Eight Parables was birthed upon reading the marathon of eight parables Jesus taught in Matthew 13. The disciples asked, “Why do you speak in parables?” Jesus replied, “I tell stories to create a readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening.”

As an admirer of the arts after watching Dead Poets Society in the 1990s that awakened in me a deep love for art despite being raised in modern societies prioritizing STEM, my soul was gripped by how the world needs this — the art of parables. That parables is an art and trademark of Jesus.

In the last seven years, we experimented and prototyped this vision between helping faith-driven founders tell their stories in short docs (often pro bono or free) and creating scripted Originals MVP “Dirty Laundry” + Beta “Breath”. Incubating at Missional Labs in 2024-25 sealed the vision.

A lab for Kingdom Dreamers

With my global cohort at Missional Labs, we all came with Kingdom dreams.

This spiritual community of dreamers is to be my biggest gift of the program.

My biggest takeaway from Missional Labs was it gave me theological anchors and framework to put into form and structure for the vision of Eight Parables. I would discover early in the 9-month program, I was neither seeking funding nor being founder in the traditional start-up sense.

I did deeply resonate with fellow Bay Area founder Foster the City’s Philip Pattison in awakening the local church to its missional call, Altitude Mission’s founding leadership (Lara, Will and Sam) as well as Prateek Kashyap in innovating global missions out of France and India respectively.

I also re-discovered the INFP in me dislikes attention with a passion. (Pitching is hard! Or not me?) Besides not being cut in the traditional founder mould or journey, I had a bit of the opposite problem, what do I do with the money? What am I building with it? What am I to do with that 2018 vision?

What had come with the vision in 2018 was also, a random plot of land that I was led to invest in at the same time (in Proverbs 31:16 style, my partner will vouch for the miracle) that became properties I turned at a divine profit by 2022. Like in Acts 4, it has been put through Eight Parables.

What I had in my hands then: money, missional heart, and making films.

I was not born into wealth, quite the opposite, the pursuit of any career in the arts was but a luxury. Yet, in working the mission fields, the freelance writing and media work I undertook to barely fund an apostolic life in Southeast Asia would be transformed by the Lord into an alabaster jar I now hold.

I had stepped into the world of film and TV in 2011 through my first full-time role in the Olympic Movement resolving my heart for redemptive storytelling. Even as that was quite a transition from the five years I did frontline missions in Cambodia, I remained a serial tentmaker across Asia and Europe.

‘The Missional Practitioner’

The mentorship I received from Missional Labs’ founders, Tyler and Stephen, and other mentors (Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing, Michael Guaglione, and Pastor Dave Lomas) was profound. Firstly, in my reconstruction of a missional call or identity in light of what the Lord is up to with the Church today.

This is fundamentally foundational to why even build Eight Parables.

Secondly, recalibrating faith-and-work, in light of the growing confusion or messiness of evangelicalism since the 2020 pandemic, I felt a range of grief or emotions that I must do something. I left all my “secular” work fully by 2021 for “vocational ministry” roles, or so I thought, in search for answers.

Hoping to find missional alignment, instead I hit a wall — or walls. Traversing through like the dark night of the soul, as I had many questions if the church is training us well - or at all? - in living missionally in the full sense of Missio Dei to finish well. Reading Sacred Fire in 2022 was very re-orienting.

That by 2023 also, I began to wonder if we may have made The Great Commission so unimaginative, so out of reach, so elusive that does not reflect the heart of God and His ultimately creative nature? And by 2025, in incubating Eight Parables through Missional Labs later, I am certain.

I chanced upon Missional Labs while doing seminary for my MA in Leadership and Innovation at Biola University where two classes, Theology of Leadership by Helen Mitchell and Theology of Innovation by Rachel Bodell, gave me first glimpses of the clarity I was seeking for the vision of Eight Parables.

Missional Labs sold me on their vision to innovate and re-imagine mission for the Church. That was the divine confidence I needed to launch Eight Parables.

‘You’re a missional practitioner.’ When Tyler shared this in our first in-person session in New York City in September 2024, it was a fresh taste of Missio Dei reawakening like the third day. I was floored. In this one sentence of his, I felt seen, and like a sliver of light at the end of years of the dark night.

By April 2025 on Holy Saturday, I soft-launch Eight Parables with an intimate group of friends in San Francisco for a private screening of our beta parable short film ‘Breath’. Beholding a day of tensions underscoring a nuanced faith — and in Jesus’ art of parables to unveil a riveting Kingdom way so.

The Patronage for Parables

We also previewed Fourthly by Eight Parables — our flagship fourth place (or art incubator) for artists or creative founders experimenting unscripted short films of nuanced faith in the ever artful way of Jesus: asking parabolic, philosophical, provocative questions for the flourishing life.

This would headline the new era of Eight Parables — an art patronage for the art of parables. In May 2025, I completed and commissioned out of Missional Labs with clarity of this language I didn’t have going into the program in 2024. With this clarity, I anticipate resuming a tentmaking career in 2026.

2026 will be a deeply transitional year for Eight Parables in this manner like a birth into the ‘second half’ of my tentmaking call or career if I may borrow the language of Ronald Rolheiser in ‘Sacred Fire’. Wherein the ‘first half’, I was in a tentmaking career deep in the weeds in creating art and media.

Seven years ago, I left a full-time role as commissioning editor and producer with the Olympic Channel. I was part of an award-winning team that oversaw commissioning and distributing multi-million dollars funding from the IOC to make artful films that amplify a shared humanity through Olympism.

That was also when Eight Parables dropped in my spirit in December 2018 — that the European art roots and history geek in me had not stopped thinking how the Church may too commission-create art the same way, in a time such as this. This is a new area of leadership I look forward to grow into.

Like the Renaissance Church was that era’s greatest art patron, I wonder, if we are in a parallel need and time to be commissioning art that inspire sacred awe, ignite a deeper humanism truth, and invigorate spiritual contemplation. This is our transition focus in 2026 from creating to commissioning.

Or perhaps, the full circle moment.

Epilogue: 2025 in review

In a world increasingly shaped by technology and AI, ushers in heightened skepticism along a deep truth-seeking time in history. I do believe the art of parables exists to awaken the human capacity for emotional discomfort and a deeper human longing for the true, good, and beautiful way of life.

In 2025, in taking small steps into this new art patronage era of Eight Parables starting by earmarking an art commissioning fund distributed to a variety of partners globally. The hope is these may begin to provide a sense of the art we’d fund in alignment with Eight Parables global vision and mission:

• Fourthly: Untamable — while this short is a test pilot, we commissioned a post-production team in Malaysia to co-create its creative art direction.

• Fourthly: The Shrink — incubating docseries of fellow ML founder and spiritual director, Chris Cipollone, for Life To The Full in Australia.

• Fourthly with Ien Chi — ‘burnout’ Creative Director and PK with millions YouTube views, he’s incubating an original work re-navigating spirituality.

• Gave into crowdfunding of Missional Labs alumni UK-based ’s coming-of-age NextGen short film ‘Between Sundays’.

• Gave into crowdfunding of fellow ML cohort founders, Murray and Claire Rodger, for ’ proof-of-concept short doc ‘David’.

We highlight these if anyone else should feel as moved to join us in support of any kind, as patronage goes beyond funding art to share or admire art with us.

In 2026, we will continue to incubate a couple new Fourthly shorts with our network of partners: Japanese artist Ayaka Uchida, Romin Bahk and fellow ML founder, Friendship Lab’s Sheridan Voysey, in an Original partnership with Tribela where I co-invest and advise on content and partnerships.

More to unveil in next month’s founder letter. I am also very excited to foster deeper partnerships with Missional Labs and my home church, Reality SF, in 2026 as part of this transition into the art patronage for the art of parables. If you have read this far, thank you for your friendship. Journey well.

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