Member Spotlight: Brett Varvel, House of Grace Studios

Why SMI? The Varvels see 'the Body of Christ helping each other'

Age 5 was a big year for Brett Varvel.

He was born again in Christ, and he watched a movie that directed the course of his future career—a family-approved version of Back to the Future.

The two events would shape his future as a Christian filmmaker, actor, and director.

“I saw that movie and it just grabbed me,” he said. “The moving pictures and sounds created these emotional reactions in me. Even at a 5-year-old age level, I thought, ‘I must do this when I get older.’”

That’s when the journey to movies began for Brett, who is also a husband and father. He and his wife, Christina, live in Indiana with their six children, two of whom are in Heaven. Brett serves as executive director of House of Grace Studios, which has produced feature films like The War Within and The Board, and has collaborated on multiple other productions.

House of Grace’s newest feature film, Disciples in the Moonlight, has a theatrical release this month that will arrive in theaters July 17-24. (Tickets are available through Fathom Events.)

‘Imagine what I could do through you’

A fascination with movies and storytelling prompted 5-year-old Brett to start exploring his own creativity.

“I guess my parents were never shy about letting me take the home video camera and just make silly movies and do all kinds of ridiculous things,” he said. “So, I was very much self-taught all the way through high school.”

When he was 18, Brett entered an Indiana state-wide arts competition, where he was tasked with making a project around the theme of a single word. That year, the word was “change."

“I just had this clear vision of making a short film about my coming to faith in Christ,” he said. “I made this short movie and entered it into this competition, which was not a Christian competition, and was blown away that I actually won first place in the entire state.”

Even more impressive is that Brett later found out that a custodian who watched the film at the awards ceremony had given his life to Jesus after viewing it.

“I didn’t have the clouds part, and I didn’t hear an audible voice from God, but it was almost as if God was saying to me after that, ‘Imagine what I could do through you,’” Brett said. “So that was the beginning of this call for me to take the talents and abilities that He’s given me in filmmaking and proclaim the Gospel through the art form itself.”

Faithful, no matter the cost

In addition to drawing inspiration for his films from other art forms such as music, Brett continues making films inspired by personal experiences.

“The Lord has allotted a lot of different things in my life and I’m finding myself more and more drawn to telling these stories that are just from my own personal experience,” he said. “I’m not sure where that’s taking me, but just the word that the Lord keeps bringing to my mind is to be faithful, no matter what the cost.”

That faithfulness is a theme throughout Disciples in the Moonlight. The film takes place in a future America where the Bible as we know it is illegal, and a government-approved “Enlightened Truth Bible” is the only acceptable “sacred” text for Christians and churches. With an understanding and conviction that the country needs the real Word of God, a group of disciples makes it their mission to deliver the Scriptures to churches in the region so the true Gospel can be preached and lead others to salvation in Jesus Christ.

“I really call this movie my love letter to the Church,” Brett said. “I hope that it will be a movie that will create change and inspire people to get serious about their faith, and to dig into God’s Word and hold it up as absolute truth, absolute hope, absolute morality and authority in our lives, and that we would just get back to being serious about the Bible.”

‘We’re a film family’

Brett says his filmmaking is not a “me” thing but an “us” thing, with Christina and he in it together.

“Everything that I do—whether it’s acting, directing, editing, writing, the whole kit and caboodle, so to speak—she is just as vital and as much a part of it as I am, even though she’s not physically the one doing it all the time,” Brett said.

The Varvels’ tight-knit marriage and oneness in Christ create this teamwork, which takes shape in a lot of prayer and conversations to discern which projects Brett should take on, he said.

“I can’t tell you how important her counsel is to me,” he said. “There’s no Oscar award given for Best Supportive Wife or Best Mom or anything like that, but the thing that Christina and I are aware of is that the things that are unseen by others are actually more important to the Lord than the things that are seen.”

While his occupation is very public and, some might even say, glamorous, Brett said the support of his wife and children is the most important aspect of his career.

“We’re a film family,” he said. “A lot of the times when I’m gone on a project, our kids can come with me, since we homeschool. We travel all over the country together because we want to do it together. Christina has been a huge supporter of mine, a cheerleader and all those things, but I can’t do what I do without her love and support.”

High school sweethearts

The Varvels were high school sweethearts. They first met when they were 12 years old after the Lord’s providence moved Christina’s family from Pennsylvania to Indiana and transferred Brett from public school to a Christian school.

“It wasn’t love at first sight then and there,” Brett said. “She would tell you I was the immature girl-crazy boy, and I would have considered her the bookworm. We started dating at 16 and we’ve never been apart since.”

The Lord has led them to high peaks and carried them through dark valleys. After having two children, the couple experienced two miscarriages that ultimately taught them how to go to Jesus with grief. Christina shared her experience in her book Living Hope: Giving Birth to Death Brought Life.

“She really started writing after our first miscarriage as a way of catharsis and grieving just to process the emotions that she was experiencing,” Brett said. “She would share her diary with me and just what the Lord was laying on her heart, and it allowed me to see something that I wasn’t even aware of how to do. It was such a healing thing for me to read the things that God was putting on her heart, and at one point during the process, I told her, ‘Honey, I think you’re writing a book. This needs to be shared with people.’”

Christina was faithful to share her experience with other mothers and parents walking through similar experiences, and even with those who weren’t going through the same thing.

“It has blessed so many people, not only who have lost children but just who have unanswered questions in the whole realm of grief and how to go to Jesus with it and how to heal properly,” Brett said.

The Master Storyteller

Both Brett and Christina have more projects the Lord is leading them to complete. Whether writing books or making movies, the two practice obedience in sharing the Lord’s goodness with the world through their artistry.

In making his movies, Brett has seen doors opened to have Gospel conversations that likely would not have happened within church walls. When you can communicate a story to people, it causes them to think a little differently, and God is a storyteller, Brett said.

“He is the great creator, and He is the master storyteller,” he said. “Jesus used parables when He spoke to crowds to illustrate points, and so I find it only fitting that we would do the same, that we would utilize art forms like movies and television and books and music to communicate truth to people in a way that they could potentially understand it for the first time.”