Marketing Jesus: The Promise And Peril Of ‘he Gets Us’

“Just do it.” “Obey your thirst.” “Never stop exploring.”

History loves a three-word marketing slogan. The best ones burrow deep into our cultural psyche and create sentimental bonds between us and the shoe, the soda, or the sweatshirt. In a way, the words themselves become the product. They symbolize the feeling we’re chasing when we reach for the next thing that might, just might, make us happy.

A few years ago, a nonprofit ministry called the Servant Foundation unveiled their own three-word slogan they hoped would change the world: “He gets us.” Through a series of short-form advertisements, billboards, YouTube videos, and other media, the Servant Foundation (now The Signatry, and currently not associated with “He Gets Us”) sought to reintroduce an increasingly secular and divided America to Jesus. It wasn’t to be a preachy or academic or polarizing Jesus. These ads would say simply one thing: Jesus gets us.

Super Bowl Messaging

“He Gets Us” has enjoyed massive exposure thanks to its series of Super Bowl advertisements. In 2024, the campaign’s ad featured a series of (possibly computer-generated) images of people washing others’ feet. The images were intentionally provocative and counterintuitive: a police officer rinsing the feet of a young black man, a well-dressed “popular girl” serving a socially marginal girl at school. The ad also included a picture of a young woman outside an abortion clinic, having her feet washed by an older woman who appears to belong to a group of pro-life protesters.

In this year’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and Eagles, “He Gets Us” returned with a similar ad, but this time titled “What Is Greatness?” This ad—which The New York Times ranked as the eighth-best of the Super Bowl—featured a series of photographs showing people in various acts of kindness and generosity, as Johnny Cash solemnly sings his cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” An organ donor holds the hands of his recipient, while a young woman helps the victim of a car accident escape her vehicle. It also depicts a hug between a man wearing a John 3:16 hat and a member of an LGBT+ Pride parade. The ad concludes with the onscreen words, “Jesus showed us what greatness really is.”

It’s obvious one of the goals of “He Gets Us” is to cut across political and ideological divides. To some extent, they succeed. The writers know where the fault lines in American religious culture are—abortion, LGBT+, race, class, and so on And who could resist being moved by these images of human vulnerability and compassion? Who can push out of his or her mind the many moments in the Gospels where Jesus met such needs and taught his followers to do the same?

Impressionistic Jesus

“He Gets Us” is a Christian-themed campaign fit for an impressionistic, algorithmic generation. The ads aim to capture attention and create an instant audience response of curiosity about and sympathy for Jesus. These aren’t two goals but rather one. The image-based, music-backed ads lack exposition or annotation; such things would only get in the way of the audience’s emotional response.

The image-based, music-backed ads lack exposition or annotation; such things would only get in the way of the audience’s emotional response.

Cultural critics and media theorists have decried for half a century now the way our communication technologies increasingly divide language from meaning. Neil Postman lamented the television’s revolution away from the “typographic mind” toward a “peek-a-boo world” where quick-cut pictures and sound substitute for thinking and conversation.

But this isn’t just a problem for secular academics. The temptation to enchant an audience with an aesthetic is an old one for Christian pastors and communicators too. Consider the way some megachurches, especially in the “seeker-sensitive” era, utilize dim lights, huge video screens, ethereal rock music, and lavish coffee bars to captivate attention. By themselves, these tools aren’t necessarily antithetical to the serious teaching of Scripture. But they do tend toward an impressionistic Jesus who can be consumed quickly and conveniently without uncomfortable silences, or confession, or complicated doctrines.

Gospel Context Collapse

The impressionistic Jesus of “He Gets Us” doesn’t seem to make much sense out of the particular neuroses of American culture. In the ad campaign, Jesus is more a compassionate friend than a Lord. Without more content—Who really is Jesus? Who are we? Exactly how does Jesus “get” us?—the Jesus of the ad campaign is simply a feeling to chase, rather than a person to listen to.

There’s a danger here of context collapse, where an idea that’s true and correct in one particular context loses its truthfulness by being broadcast in a way that disregards that context. For example, “Jesus gets us” is a message best used for people who have already accepted their need for a Savior and desire assurance that nothing they’ve done can cause Jesus to cast them out (John 6:37). In terms of a mass audience whose cultural religion is most likely expressive individualism, however, “he gets us” sounds like a mantra that reinforces the primacy of the self. This mentality keeps my personal psychology at the center, so the question that matters isn’t “What must I do to be saved” but “What must you do to affirm me?”

Further, the campaign’s good intentions to unite a fractious American political culture inadvertently end up pigeonholing Jesus in the red/blue dilemma. The imagery of kindness and service at a Pride parade or an abortion clinic is unhelpfully opaque. Does Jesus wash us clean because abortion is a stain, or because protesting outside the clinic is? Does Jesus extend his hand to those confused about their sexuality or gender because his grace can heal and transform us into what he made us to be, or because his grace allows us to define for ourselves what we can be? The gospel’s radical confrontation of both secular self-determination and also the way we view and treat our enemies is lost with these unclear, simplistic impressions.

Outdated Appeal

“He Gets Us” isn’t without its strengths. These cleverly produced ads work well in the digital era. I have no doubt they’ll succeed in overcoming some viewers’ entrenched biases against Christianity. There’s profound truth in these bite-size ads. And the campaign’s organizers offer resources and volunteers through the website that undoubtedly have led and will lead to true conversions.

The gospel’s radical confrontation of both secular self-determination and the way we view and treat our enemies is lost with these unclear, simplistic impressions.

But despite the tremendous financial effort, “He Gets Us” seems unlikely to make a lasting impression on viewers. Even if its aesthetics work, the messaging is dated. The audience the campaign seems to want—religiously open, politically progressive, and so on—isn’t a flourishing demographic. The “vibe shift” of openness to Christianity seems right now to be facilitated at least in part by a rejection of the kind of binaries the ad campaign traffics in. Many are asking uncomfortable questions of liberalism: whether abortion clinics need scrutiny instead of sympathy and whether Pride parades are misguided instead of misunderstood.

For all its contemporary feel, “He Gets Us” seems like nostalgia for a bygone religious era. The American church may be entering an era in which fewer people ask for Jesus to “get” them, and more people ask him to save them: from the ruins of self, the lies of modernity, and the despair of unbelief. In this cultural moment, Christians can reach for much more than impressionistic images and music. We can reach for truth.

History might love a three-word slogan, but eternity is much more patient.