Creative Process, Institutions, Faithfulness, and Beauty
A Conversation with a Phygital Fellow
I was invited to write a piece about Oikon Studios. I asked Jess Bielman if we could have a conversation around ministry, creativity, and sustainability instead. He asked insightful questions, and I rambled on. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. For context, I am an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church on honorable location. I work in finance and write weekly liturgies. I am fortunate to be a part of the Phygital Fellows cohort. I am happy.
On Sustaining Weekly Creative Work
Jess:
Oikon Studios devotional or liturgical work comes out weekly. Week-to-week consistency can become a grind for creatives. How do you keep your heart, mind, and creativity moving over a long period of time?
Mike:
I don’t think I ever started with, “I want to create weekly liturgies every week until kingdom come.”
Generative ministry (be it sermon writing, or writing liturgies or music) was always born from personal reflection and study for its own sake.
Most of my mornings start with coffee and emotional regulation (lol).
Usually that involves journaling. Lots of journaling. Sometimes it’s gratitude journaling. Sometimes it’s an Examen practice. Sometimes I’m reflecting on Scripture. Mostly I’m just processing my own stuff emotionally!
I’ve been doing this for well over a decade now. Not to be creative. Just for my own sanity.
Every once in a while, when I sit down to pour out my thoughts, reflections, and curiosities on paper, something worth sharing spills out. A phrase. A prayer. A reflection. A perspective. An observation of humanity. An incongruence of life.
This has always been a reservoir for sermon writing and creative work.
And Oikon’s Liturgies have a pretty clear structure. Scripture. Poetry. Blessing. So I’m just funneling and editing raw journals into a digestible work.
I suppose I also have some values around the type of liturgies I hope to create — more poetic than didactic, more human than abstract, etc.
So honestly, the weekly rhythm doesn’t really feel like a grind. It’s mostly just my way of coping with life.
On Making Spiritual Work Public
Jess:
What was your hope in making this public and sharing it online?
Mike:
Oikon as it currently exists emerged from many different soils.
My family and I were transitioning away from traditional congregational ministry and exploring other ways to offer our gifts and graces to the world — other ways discipleship and spiritual formation might happen outside a normal American church model.
So Oikon shifted from being a local faith community into more of a resource for spiritual formation. The mission stayed the same — making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world — but the modality changed.
But you know, church is public. Ministry is public. So part of me just assumed this would also be public.
But I also remember posting some of those first reflections and physically feeling this insecurity crawl up the back of my neck.
The first time I hit “Post” on some reflection piece on prayer, this voice came over me like a wave:
Who do you think you are to put spiritual content into the world?
What gives you the authority?
I remember thinking, what the hell is this?
But that’s why I do all that emotional regulation work each morning!
I had to bring that into prayer and conversations with people I trusted. And my friends and mentors, they pushed back on me and said, “Who do you think you are not to share it?”
That was important for me.
I also think creatives and clergy are often deeply insecure people. So having relationships that counteract those voices is really important. Shout out to Phygital Fellows.
On Process, Journaling, and Editing
Jess:
What does the actual process look like for you? Are you writing these late at night? In journals? Coffee shops? What’s the rhythm?
Mike:
Messy. Very messy.
I’m forty years old now and I’ve been journaling since I was thirteen. So that’s… twenty-seven years?
I’ve used every possible modality. Apple Notes. TextEdit. Notion. Evernote. Dotted journals. Right now I’m into graph paper and drawing charts and diagrams all over everything.
There’s not really a strict regimen.
Usually when something feels worth reflecting on, I get it down using whatever’s nearby. Laptop. Phone. Notebook.
If I go to a coffee shop, I’ll always have all three with me anyway — laptop, notebook, phone.
I do think handwriting accesses a different part of the brain for me. But whenever I try forcing myself into one particular system or modality, I eventually get bored with it.
So mostly I’ve just learned:
if something is burning in the soul, write it down.
Then later, there’s usually some kind of structure that emerges.
Reflection. Prayer. Blessing.
A lot of the editing process is actually subtraction
And filtering!
Earlier in ministry, especially growing up in evangelical Korean-American Youth Group cultures, my instinct was to write in ways that convicted people. The underlying assumption was always: “How can this challenge someone? Correct someone?”
Over time, I started realizing that kind of writing can become harsh without meaning to.
So now I try filtering everything through different questions:
How can this be lighter?
More beautiful?
Less judgmental and more inviting?
When I read Wendell Berry or Mary Oliver, their writing can be deeply convicting, but they’re not yelling at you. They’re offering observations about the world that slowly move you toward a different way of being human.
That’s closer to what I want now.
On Poetry, Beauty, and Formation
Jess:
Why poetry and prayer instead of more traditional teaching or theology?
Mike:
That’s a really good question.
I sat under brilliant theologians at Duke Divinity School. Willie Jennings. Randy Maddox. Kate Bowler. Those classes genuinely changed my life. So I don’t want to downplay the importance of theology or teaching.
But personally, my soul tends to move most deeply through beauty. Music. Photography. Poetry. Film. Art. Nature.
Conversion and transformation is not a matter of cognition alone.
Discipleship involves orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy. Right belief. Right practice. Right affection.
I think my work probably lives most naturally in that third category.
After fifteen years of pastoral ministry, I’ve also realized people are rarely transformed by arguments alone. Most folks tend to seek intellectual echo chambers reinforcing what they already believe.
I used to think persuasive theological arguments were going to really move the needle in Methodist spaces (lol). Honestly… nobody cared… unless they already agreed.
But if something moves the heart? That’s different. That stops you and forces you to pause and listen.
At this point, I’d rather write three honest lines of poetry than another argument about atonement theory.
On Optimization and Faithfulness
Jess:
Do you think much about audience growth or reach?
Mike:
Honestly, not that much.
I’m mostly trying to create a body of work I’d be proud for my daughters to encounter someday.
I mean, maybe these words are driven by a subconscious ego that thinks I’m more elite by not caring about such matters. Like, probably, there’s some part of me that wants growth or influence. I don’t know. I try to stay honest about that.
But I’m just so deeply uncomfortable with capitalist visions of ministry that revolve around maximizing reach, optimizing engagement, scaling influence, monetizing everything. It makes me want to puke.
Something in my spirit recoils from that.
The next step for Oikon has never really come from optimization strategy. It’s usually come from asking:
What feels worthwhile?
What feels beautiful?
What feels genuine?
And then just trying to faithfully follow that thread.
Honestly, some of the liturgies I personally think are kind of mediocre end up deeply affecting people. And some I think are really strong just like… disappear into silence.
Faithfulness is just showing up.
On Meaningful Responses
Jess:
Without those frameworks, what are some of the responses that have stayed with you most?
Mike:
Some of the most meaningful responses have been really personal and quiet.
There was someone from a church I served years ago who recently suffered a stroke and was bedridden in the hospital. She reached out and told me she had been reading these liturgies weekly, and that one of the recent prayers created an environment where she experienced God in a way she desperately needed in her condition.
Moments like that stay with you.
That’s kind of the thing with any creative work in the name of Christ.
We offer ourselves to the world and let the Spirit do whatever the Spirit is going to do with it.
Sometimes I reread my own work and think, “Man, this one is kind of lame,” and those are the pieces that deeply bless somebody.
And sometimes the pieces I think are actually pretty good just disappear into the void.
Praise be to God (lol)!
On Institutions, Freedom, and Finding Resonance
Jess:
You’ve operated within institutional settings for a long time, and Oikon feels much more non-institutional. How have you found the freedom and support needed to sustain this kind of work?
Mike:
What I’ve found is that whatever institution I’m located in — whatever hierarchy or bureaucracy I’m operating inside of — it’s always smaller than I think, and its always attached to a larger whole.
In the United Methodist world, for example, there’s the local church, district, conference, jurisdiction, US, global church.
Whenever I became frustrated or constrained within one particular space, if I zoomed out a bit or looked adjacent to where I was, there were usually still one or two people somewhere who I resonated with — who shared similar convictions.
That became really important recurrence for me, because I’ve always felt a little strange compared to typical Methodist clergy.
My mental model of ministry was never really about building a religious career. So whenever tensions surfaced around my convictions and institutional norms, I found myself reaching beyond my immediate environment — grabbing coffee with people outside my normal circles, building friendships outside institutional spaces altogether.
Mentors. Friends. High school friends far removed from religion.
Those relationships expanded my imagination.
And honestly, having a stubborn personality probably helped too (lol). I’ve often jumped before fully knowing where I was going to land.
But over and over again, those jumps somehow led to new relationships, new resources, and new imagination for what ministry and creative work could become.
I always say
There are no failures, only pivot points.
And even now, Oikon still exists within structures of accountability. It’s a nonprofit. There’s a board. There are people committed to the work.
Groups like Phygital Fellows have also been meaningful because they create gathering spaces for people who feel slightly outside traditional ministry norms. Spaces where imagination, experimentation, and resonance can actually breathe a little.
On Guidance for Creatives and Ministers
Jess:
What guidance would you offer someone wanting to share spiritually creative work publicly?
Mike:
I shared this in a previous post, but for me: financial health, mental health, and dignity are the equations you want to solve if you want to have a sustained happiness as a minister within a capitalist society.
But really, all that points to is learning to be fully grounded in who you are and being clear in what you value as a person.
If you have those three things, you can’t really lose.
Again, for me, separating how I survive financially from ministry was deeply liberating.
There was too much internal conflict when ministry was also tied to my family’s future financial well being. Don’t get me going here (lol)!
Beyond that, I think the best creative and spiritual work comes out of self-awareness and your own healing and transformation.
Listen for what Thurman called the Sound of the Genuine. What path of healing is the voice of God leading you towards? Just walk it.
Then pay attention to what feels alive in you. Not because it’s useful. Not because it scales. Not because it performs well.
But because it’s your vulnerable self before God.
Something beautiful will emerge there.
Creating beauty is the work of translating what God is doing in you into something that will bless another pilgrim on their way towards salvation.