Founder Letter: The art of building slowly
Building at a sacred speed of formation in a 'move fast and break things' world.
Heading into Holy Week this Sunday evening (or Monday morning if you are in APAC or Europe), we just published our “beta” parable short film, Breath!
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.
Just watched Breath, omgosh so goooood 😭😭