About

Founded in 2025, Brighter Churches exists to serve the local church with clarity, conviction, and care. We help churches grow—and glow—by approaching ministry in a brighter, more intentional way: brighter in biblical faithfulness, brighter in excellence, brighter in effectiveness, and brighter in how the gospel is proclaimed, practiced, and passed on. Our mission is to equip churches with trusted, biblically grounded resources and proven strategies that strengthen discipleship, develop healthy volunteer teams, safeguard children, and help churches operate with theological integrity and practical wisdom in every context.

Brighter Churches is shaped by decades of hands-on ministry experience. Its founder and Creative Pastor, Justin Kintzel, brings more than 20 years of service as a worship pastor, teacher, songwriter, creative director, lead designer, and video producer, serving churches and Christian organizations of every size. From leading worship and creative teams at the world’s largest Christian university, to serving at one of the nation’s largest multisite churches, helping plant a church, launching a second campus, and leading worship and creative ministries in a large Midwest congregation, Justin has helped build and shape over 1,000 worship services across multiple organizations. Along the way, he has built bands, developed volunteer worship and production teams, trained technical leaders, and designed services where music, visuals, video, and theology work together to tell the gospel story clearly and faithfully.

A maximizer at heart, Justin has always asked a simple but searching question: How can this be better?—theologically, biblically, ethically, creatively, and in every way that serves people well. That question has shaped how he leads, builds teams, designs systems, and evaluates whether ministry practices are truly forming people or merely sustaining programs.

That experience revealed a consistent need across churches: resources that are both deeply biblical and practically usable. Churches need discipleship tools that form people, not just fill programs. They need clear systems for building and sustaining volunteer teams. They need thoughtful, well-designed environments and media that support worship rather than distract from it. They need strong safety and care policies for children and students. They need discipleship resources that genuinely move people toward Christlikeness. They need policies and procedures that prioritize spiritual maturity, not merely attendance. And they need theological clarity not only in what is preached, but in how the church operates, leads, and serves.

In 2025, Justin and his wife Ashley walked through the painful revelation of Ashley’s affair. Choosing honesty, repentance, and healing, they brought the truth into the light and pursued restoration together and within their community of faith. While their journey of reconciliation and renewed intimacy has been nothing short of a miracle, their church ultimately chose not to walk with them through that process and asked Justin to resign from his role as Worship Pastor. Though deeply painful, that moment became a clarifying pivot rather than an ending.

Out of that season, Brighter Churches was born—not as a reaction against the Church, but as a commitment to serve it more broadly. What began as personal loss became a wider calling: to help churches lead with integrity, clarity, and care for real people in real situations. Justin stepped away from full-time church staff roles and into resourcing the Church full-time, offering tools shaped by Scripture, refined through experience, and built to serve churches at every stage.

Ultimately, Brighter Churches exists because the Church matters. It exists because discipleship matters. It exists because volunteers deserve support, children deserve safe and thoughtful ministry environments, and leaders deserve resources that help them shepherd well. By God’s grace, the Church does not have to choose between being biblical and being effective.

It can—and it should—be both.