By Sheila Banks
Communications Specialist

Proverbs 16:9 (ESV) says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” James Tew can attest to that.

Tew, a communication and public relations professional from Indiana, recently found himself in a new role—executive movie producer.

“I never, never dreamed that I would write something that would be a movie,” Tew said.

When Tew’s three sons were in high school, they were part of a very active youth ministry at their church, and many of those students were involved in their high school’s theater program. Each year, the youth group performed a Christmas program for the church. One year, they performed “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and packed the house.

Following the success of that performance, the director “lament(ed) that there’s not more popular Christmas stories that everybody’s familiar with that really (share) a gospel message,” says Tew.

Tew took that to heart and pondered what might be familiar for people and also have a strong Gospel message. This inspired him to write “CAROL” for his church youth group.

“CAROL,” written as a musical play, is based on “A Christmas Carol.” While it includes characters from Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol,” it tells a different story. Main character, Solomon Lynch, is a self-centered slacker in a small Indiana town who comes face-to-face with Scrooge and his “associates” on Christmas Eve for a musical journey through his past, present, and future.

People enjoyed the performance, and some suggested to Tew that he should turn it into a movie.

Tew, aware of a Christian feature film director living in a nearby town, decided to reach out and send him the script.

“To my shock, I got an email back from him that said, ‘Yeah, this would make a pretty good movie,’” he said.

But there were two obstacles: financing and lack of original music.

At that time, Tew’s oldest son was getting ready to leave for college, so he put the idea on the back burner for a while.

Then a few years ago, after the kids were all out of college, Tew attended a men’s retreat. The speaker asked the group, “What are you going to do with your money in retirement? Are you going to hang onto it? Is retirement going to be jetsetting? Or are you going to use it to keep serving God?” Tew returned home and pondered this.

“I wonder if maybe we should take our retirement funds to try and get this movie done,” he suggested to his wife.

She had been thinking the same thing and readily agreed. So, obstacle number one, financing, was covered.

Obstacle two still remained— writing original songs.

Although Tew dabbled in creative writing for fun, he had never written songs, poetry, or music before. “But as I was looking at different parts of the play ... songs were just coming to mind. ... God laid songs on my heart. That’s the only way I can explain it,” Tew said.

After moving to a nearby town and onto a new church, Tew discovered that his new church’s music leader had prior experience writing songs. Tew would “plunk tunes out” on a keyboard to write the melody and continued writing lyrics. He would then send them to his worship pastor for feedback. The worship pastor confirmed the quality and added chords to the melody.

With obstacles removed, it was time to begin filming.

Filming took place in three northeast Indiana towns (Angola, Albion, and Kendallville) throughout the first three weeks of February 2024. Churches in the area came together to support the cast and crew through prayer, providing meals, and serving as extras on set.

“That’s one of those things that’s awe inspiring—the whole body of Christ coming together,” Tew said. “It’s really been cool to see God working throughout this process.”

Time and again, God’s hand appeared to be at work.

For instance, Tew partnered with a ministry called Set Shepherds, which works with film productions to help coordinate meals, prayer partners, counseling, and more for cast and crew.

“This was the first production they’ve had that all the meals were provided by churches, and production itself did not have to pay out for any meals,” he said.

Another instance of God’s provision was with the weather. It was 60 degrees in February in northern Indiana, which was a miracle itself. Late one night while filming, the weather app indicated rain in the area, and eventually showed rain right on top of them, but it didn’t rain. They saw some sprinkles that night, while the next town seven miles north got drenched.

As the crew described, nothing should have been working, but God has His hand in it.

“Our goal with this whole project is that it gives people hope in Christ,” Tew said.

“CAROL” is a faith-based musical feature film scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Learn more about the movie “CAROL” and its release at Carolmovie.com.