Founder Letter: A new era of Eight Parables
2026 marks a brand new beginning for Eight Parables, or clarity if you may.
“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.
Eight Parables is an innovative movement and patronage that invests and incubates beautiful short films that awaken the soul.
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 The Way UK’s coming-of-age NextGen short film ‘Between Sundays’.
Gave into crowdfunding of fellow ML cohort founders, Murray and Claire Rodger, for Doxology Studios’ 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.