There is a particular kind of fatigue that shows up in people who think they are paying attention. It is the fatigue of scrolling past outrage, of feeling constantly evaluated, of living with a low-grade anxiety that never quite clears the room. For many, church is either too far away geographically, too loaded socially, or simply too predictable in tone. Not every person rejects faith, but a lot of people reject the way faith is sometimes packaged.
That is where He Gets Us tries to enter the conversation. The campaign invites people to consider Jesus, his life, and his teachings, and to ask why he matters today. It does not try to start in a sanctuary. It starts in the places where people already are, including major cultural spaces.
If you have only seen the campaign through headlines or big moments, it can be easy to treat it like just another ad campaign. But the underlying idea is more personal than that. “About Jesus” does not https://elliottdeu262.bearsfanteamshop.com/he-gets-us-understanding-kindness-and-jesus-together have to mean “only for churchgoers.” The campaign’s stated aim is to reintroduce people to Jesus and to highlight themes like love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. It began in 2021 as a response to loneliness, division, and anxiety, with the intention of sharing stories about Jesus in unexpected places to spark curiosity and conversation.
Whether you love that approach or dislike it, it reveals something important: Jesus is not only a Sunday topic. Jesus is a daily question.
The design choice: meeting people where life already happens
A lot of religious messaging assumes a certain baseline. It assumes you already believe something like Christianity is worth considering. It assumes you are looking for community. It assumes you have context for biblical references. It assumes you can tolerate a certain style of speech.
He Gets Us does not appear to operate on those assumptions. It is meant to be encountered in public spaces and cultural moments, places where people might otherwise never pause long enough to ask, “Who is Jesus really?” The campaign has been widely associated with Super Bowl advertising, with reporting that it ran ads in 2023 and 2024. The point of that visibility is not subtle. It is meant to pull Jesus into the same field of attention where people are already making choices: what to watch, what to talk about, what to feel.
To me, the most telling phrase is the campaign’s own framing of the goal, reintroducing Jesus, not recruiting instantly. Reintroduction changes the temperature of the whole conversation. It suggests that the audience is not starting at zero. Many people who respond to He Gets Us are not atheists who woke up yesterday. They are often people who have heard versions of the story, but not necessarily encountered the person.
And when you reintroduce someone, you are doing something vulnerable. You are saying, “I know you think you understand. I’m asking you to look again.”
“Not affiliated” does not mean “not about”
One reason people argue about He Gets Us is that they want it to land in a category so they can evaluate it quickly. Is it political? Is it denominational? Is it tied to a church brand? Is it meant to promote one faith identity over others?
The campaign’s FAQ says it is led by Come Near, Inc., a nonprofit, and that He Gets Us, LLC is wholly owned and managed by Come Near, Inc. It also states that the campaign is not affiliated with any single individual, political position, church, denomination, or faith viewpoint, though it is “about Jesus” and thus connected to Christianity.
That matters. A public campaign that avoids affiliation with a specific political position or denomination is trying to keep the message from becoming a party slogan. At the same time, it cannot be pure “brand neutrality” because it is explicitly about Jesus. Christianity is not a topic you can discuss without touching identity, worldview, and moral claims. That tension is baked in.
You can agree with that design or argue against it. But it is not accidental. It is the campaign trying to hold two realities at once: the message is religious, and the delivery is meant to be accessible.
The themes behind the marketing
The reason the campaign keeps pulling people back is that the themes it emphasizes are not abstract. Love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, service are not slogans in the way “buy now” is a slogan. They describe a kind of life, and that kind of life is hard to deny people need.
He Gets Us highlights these themes as part of its goal to reintroduce people to Jesus. The campaign also publishes articles and resources focused on Jesus and topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality. That range is important. If the only thing people ever hear about Christianity is guilt or judgment, they will stop listening. But when the conversation includes relationships and mental health, it is closer to the actual terrain of daily living.
From experience, I can tell you this: people rarely struggle with “the concept of God” first. They struggle with being hurt, being misunderstood, being lonely, being stuck in patterns they cannot explain. They wrestle with how to treat others when they feel threatened. They wonder whether kindness is naïve or whether forgiveness is possible when trust has been broken.
When a faith message touches those categories without turning them into a performance, people feel relief. Not everyone agrees. Some people get skeptical. But at least the conversation becomes human.
Jesus beyond a religious setting
If you spend any time around communities, you learn a simple truth: the way people talk about Jesus depends heavily on where they think they are allowed to talk about Jesus. In many congregations, Jesus is safest when he is kept inside a framework of doctrine, worship rhythms, and shared language. Outside those walls, Jesus can turn into a symbol people fight over.
He Gets Us tries to shift the default setting. It invites people to consider Jesus, his life, and his teachings, and why he matters today, in spaces not limited to those who already attend services.
That does not mean it eliminates disagreement. It simply refuses to treat Jesus as a private topic.
For some people, that feels like a breakthrough. They do not want to wait until life is stable to ask spiritual questions. They do not want Jesus to be reachable only through institutions that already feel intimidating. They want a way to explore Jesus without feeling like they will be cornered.
For others, public visibility triggers the wrong instinct. They worry that marketing will flatten the depth of the story. They question motives when money is involved, and those questions are not entirely unreasonable. When faith is put in the middle of mass media, people start thinking about outcomes, not just intentions.
That leads to one of the campaign’s biggest controversies.
The criticism: inclusive messaging and donor reality
There has been reported criticism focused partly on perceived tension between the campaign’s inclusive public message and some financial supporters’ backing of conservative causes, including anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ efforts. Reporting has described this concern as a conflict people felt between the campaign’s message and the political world connected to certain donors.
To be clear, the campaign’s own FAQ says Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and that everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story.
So you end up with a difficult and honest question many people are unwilling to ignore: What do you do with a message that seems welcoming when the infrastructure behind it is complicated?
Some people resolve this by saying, essentially, “Don’t let donor politics disqualify Jesus.” They treat the campaign as an invitation to explore, not a full endorsement of every stakeholder. Others resolve it differently: they say the campaign cannot separate itself from the systems that fund it, and that those systems shape what the public gets to hear, and what gets softened or emphasized.
This is not a side debate. It changes how trust is built.
If you have ever tried to welcome someone into a community that has visible contradictions, you know trust does not form from good intentions alone. It forms from consistency. He Gets Us is trying to speak about Jesus in a way that is meant to be inclusive, including toward LGBTQ+ people, but critics point to the real world of sponsorship and politics that sits behind large-scale campaigns.
Either way, the controversy forces an important clarification: Jesus is not only a message you hear, he is also a person you follow, and following always has to reckon with integrity, accountability, and the gap between ideals and practices.
What it means when people say “He gets us”
The phrase “He Gets Us” suggests empathy, and empathy is a religious theme that people recognize quickly. In everyday life, you can feel the difference between someone who advises from a distance and someone who understands what it costs you to keep going.
When people respond positively to He Gets Us, they often respond to that implied closeness. The campaign’s origin story is part of the logic: it began as a response to loneliness, division, and anxiety. That indicates the creators are trying to speak to the emotional conditions people carry right now, not only to the doctrinal questions.
When people respond negatively, they sometimes feel the empathy is too polished, too packaged. They might think, “If Jesus truly gets us, where is the actual discipleship in this?” That question is fair. A campaign can make room for curiosity, but it cannot replace a life of prayer, moral formation, and community responsibility.
In other words, “he gets us” can open doors, but it cannot be the whole house.
One reason this matters is that the Christian claim about Jesus is not only that he understands suffering. The claim is that he confronts what we do with suffering. He calls people toward repentance, compassion, forgiveness, and service. Those are not just feelings. They are choices.
So if you engage with He Gets Us, it helps to ask what kind of response the message is inviting. The campaign itself frames its aim as reintroducing people to Jesus and sharing themes like love and forgiveness. That is a start. But the Christian story pushes further, toward living like the person you claim to respect.
A practical way to explore without pretending certainty
You can be curious about Jesus without signing up for every belief immediately. In many cases, curiosity is the honest starting place. People often feel pressured to choose a side before they are ready to understand what they are choosing.
He Gets Us says everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story. That phrase is small but significant. It implies exploration, not forced conversion. It also implies that the first step can be attention, not agreement.
If you want a practical posture, you could treat the campaign as a conversation starter, not a test. Give yourself permission to watch, read, or reflect for a while without trying to win an argument with your friends. You might also notice your own internal reactions. Do you feel seen? Do you feel suspicious? Do you feel hopeful in one moment and defensive in the next?
Here is a short set of reflective questions that can keep the conversation grounded:
- What part of Jesus’ life and teachings do I actually want to understand better, and what part do I want to dismiss too quickly? When the message emphasizes love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service, what would that look like in my relationships this week? Do I trust the tone of the message enough to listen, even if I do not fully agree with every organization or supporter involved? If Jesus is who Christians claim he is, what is the smallest step toward that kind of life I can take without pretending I am already there?
You might not resolve everything. But you can avoid the trap of treating Jesus as a debate topic only.
Where resources like relationships and mental health change the conversation
One reason He Gets Us has kept momentum is that it is not confined to marketing. The campaign also publishes resources focused on Jesus and topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality.
Those topics matter because Jesus is often misrepresented as someone who only speaks to moral rules. Yet in the Christian tradition, Jesus is also portrayed as someone who draws near to people, including people who feel socially exposed or emotionally overwhelmed.
For people dealing with mental health, the credibility of a faith message depends on whether it respects the person as a whole human being. If a campaign can talk about mental health without turning it into a moral failure, it gives someone room to breathe. It creates a path to spiritual hope that does not require self-denial first.
Hospitality matters for the same reason. Hospitality is one of those virtues that becomes real quickly. It is not only an idea. It shows up when someone invites a stranger to sit down, when someone makes space for difference, when someone makes a meal and treats the visitor like a guest rather than a project.
And bias is a necessary topic because every community, including religious communities, has blind spots. Bias affects who gets believed, who gets invited, and who gets judged for being different. If Jesus matters beyond a Sunday morning, it has to matter in the way people treat each other on regular weekdays, in regular conversations, in ordinary decisions about who is safe to love.
The trade-offs you cannot ignore
It would be dishonest to pretend a public campaign has no trade-offs.
First, mass media compresses. Jesus cannot be fully represented in a short spot, a billboard moment, or a social media fragment. At its best, the message can create curiosity. At its worst, it can flatten a complicated story into something emotionally satisfying but spiritually incomplete.
Second, visibility invites scrutiny. When the campaign appears in major cultural spaces, it draws attention not only to Jesus but to the campaign’s broader ecosystem. That is where controversies come from, including the reported tension between inclusive messaging and conservative political backing tied to some supporters.
Third, people bring their own histories. Some people have been burned by churches. Some people have been judged by religious language. Some people have been harmed by people who used Christianity as cover. For them, any mention of Jesus in a public campaign can feel like one more brand trying to capture their attention.
So if you are evaluating He Gets Us, the honest approach is to weigh what the campaign can realistically do. It can introduce. It can spotlight themes. It can create conversation. It can also be criticized for what it cannot control.
The Christian tradition, if it is taken seriously, would push for more than attention. It would push for a response that becomes action: love expressed, forgiveness practiced, understanding cultivated, kindness offered, service undertaken.
Why Jesus still matters when the setting changes
If you strip away the campaign layer, the reason Jesus matters beyond a Sunday morning is simple: people are still people on Monday. Loneliness still exists in group chats and open-plan offices. Division still happens in families and friendships. Anxiety still spikes when you check your bank balance, when you fear for your child’s future, when you feel trapped in a cycle you cannot break.
The claim of Christianity is that Jesus is not only a figure from the past. He is relevant to human life now, not because of clever storytelling, but because the story is about God’s engagement with human beings at the point of need.
He Gets Us tries to act on that relevance by presenting Jesus in unexpected places and emphasizing themes people recognize as urgent. It is a bid for curiosity. It is an invitation to explore the story of Jesus without insisting that you already know what you believe.
And that is the heart of the matter. Jesus is not only for the stage. He is for the street, for the kitchen table, for the hard conversation you avoid, for the apology you have to mean, for the patience you wish you had in the moment you actually need it.
If He Gets Us gives you even a small reason to look again, then the question shifts from “What is this campaign doing?” to “Who is Jesus, and what does it cost to follow him?”
That question belongs everywhere, including outside a sanctuary.
A final thought on engagement
Some people will engage with He Gets Us as a starting point. Others will reject it immediately because they cannot separate the message from the public and political reality around it. Both responses come from sincerity. The deeper need underneath is the same: people want a Jesus they can recognize as real, not merely as a slogan.
If Jesus matters beyond Sunday morning, it has to survive ordinary life. It has to survive the ambiguity of mixed motives, the friction of disagreement, and the mess of personal histories.
That is the work the Christian story invites. Not just to admire Jesus from a distance, but to let his way of love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service shape what you do when nobody is filming, when the week is long, when the emotions are raw, and when you still have to choose how to treat the person in front of you.