Marketing Jesus

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 9th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: marketing Jesus.

For almost a year, a series of ads have peppered billboards, social media, and TV. They’re all part of a marketing campaign called He Gets Us. The goal of the campaign is to restore Jesus’ reputation among unbelievers.

REICHARD: He Gets Us is even airing two commercials at the Super Bowl this Sunday. They’re estimated to cost $20 million. That may be the biggest faith-based ad campaign in history. WORLD Reporter Zoe Schimke talked to the people behind the campaign.

AUDIO: A rebel took to the streets. He recruited others to join him…they swore allegiance to him. They roamed the hood, challenged authority…

ZOE SCHIMKE, REPORTER: The ad starts with black and white still photographs: People in the inner-city with tattoos, piercings, chains. The images show them doing tricks on skateboards, climbing over fences, running from somebody chasing them.

AUDIO: Religious leaders abhorred them…We have to shut them down, they said, get them off the streets, protect our communities from these troublemakers. But they weren’t part of a gang spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

The screen cuts to black, with the words “Jesus was wrongly judged.” Then, “he gets us.”

It’s the same message that airs at the end of every ad. The campaign’s organizers hope it will challenge people’s perceptions of Jesus, and spark their curiosity.

HILL: Most folks who see the ads from He Gets Us would agree that they're, they're different.

Brad Hill is a representative for He Gets Us.

HILL: They might describe them with various adjectives, edgy, modern, fresh, whatever. But they're intentionally designed to catch attention and get people to take a look at Jesus.

The ads are on Instagram, Youtube, and they play during NFL broadcasts. They’ve already attracted millions of views. The upcoming Super Bowl is the pinnacle of the campaign so far.

The ads don’t point to any particular church or denomination, but instead direct viewers to he-gets-us-dot-com. There, site visitors can choose to start a weekly Bible reading plan, chat with a representative, or find a local discussion group to talk about Christianity.

The ads are based on survey results from people all across the country. Organizers asked the public, How do you perceive Christianity? Hill says that for many people, the attitude of Christians is off-putting. And it influences how they think about Jesus.

HILL: They would say, for example, it seems like Christians think they own Jesus, or it seems like I have to be a certain way, or check a box or be in a club, before I can get closer to Jesus.

Hill hopes that the ads will show people a side of Jesus that they’ve never seen before.

HILL: A large part of what He Gets Us is doing is really putting Jesus right out there, easy to access, easy to explore.

A small handful of anonymous donors back the He Gets Us campaign. They’re responsible for the 100 million dollar budget. He Gets Us got started when a Christian donor-advised fund called The Signatry partnered with a marketing company.

Most of the campaign’s wealthy donors have remained anonymous, except one.

GREEN: You’re going to see it at the Super Bowl, he gets us.

Dave Green is the Christian founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby. So far, he’s the only public donor to the He Gets Us campaign. Here’s what Green told Glenn Beck in a November interview.

GREEN: We’re wanting to say, ‘we’ being a lot of different people, that he gets us. He understands us. He understands all of us.

The ads have drawn criticism from more left-wing activists, who say that He Gets Us is backed by “staunchly conservative causes” and should not be trusted.

But the ads also have many conservatives worried. Some Christians are concerned that the ads downplay Christ’s divinity or holiness in order to simply be ‘seeker sensitive.’

According to the He Gets Us website, campaign leaders do believe that Jesus was fully man and fully God. But Brad Hill says that today’s audiences don’t have a common perception of Jesus’ character like past generations did, and so the message has to be tailored differently.

HILL: We seek first to help someone really develop that respect, and even interest or admiration for Jesus as a man…he went through all of the same experiences, trials and challenges that we do today, which makes him very relatable, and makes him winsome and attractive…

Todd Pruitt is the lead pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church. He argues that evangelism strategies don’t always need to adapt for newer generations.

PRUITT: ​​I saw this when I was a 20 something year old youth pastor in the early 90s, mid 90s, when the Church Growth Movement and seeker sensitivity was all the rage. And we were saying the same types of things then - well, this generation is unique. And I just…the older I've gotten, the more I've started to reject that idea, not that there aren't certain characteristics of generations that might be fairly new. But I think, for the most part, most generations have the same kind of set of problems and the same sorts of blinders.

Pruitt says that Jesus himself did ministry very differently.

PRUITT: If you look at the evangelism that Jesus did and if you look at the evangelism that the apostles did, it was all fairly - rather uniform in terms of the things they preached: they called sinners to repent, they warned them of the judgment to come. And they called them to look to Christ for forgiveness.

For Pruitt, the way to bridge gaps is through relationships - boots on the ground evangelism, and a clear message about what Jesus came to do.

PRUITT: I still believe that the message that we are sinners and that Jesus forgives and redeems is still a powerful message that needs to be heard upfront. I just don't know why we get the idea that that's something we kind of need to let people in later on down the road, after we get them to like Jesus first.

Despite some concerns, the campaign has amassed wide support from Christian audiences—and that support continues to grow. He Gets Us has big plans for the future, even beyond the Super Bowl.

HILL: I can tell you that the number of donors has grown rapidly. There's now 100 or more donors.

Brad Hill says the campaign will continue broadcasting ads across the country for the next two or three years.

HILL: So much of what's happening around He Gets Us is actually even beyond the ads, and it's happening in our churches, it's happening in ministries. And it's honestly just one conversation at a time where we hope that we can give great prompts and great ideas and great questions to ask.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Zoe Schimke.

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