Category: Encouragement

What’s the deal with the “He Gets Us” campaign?

Like running into an old friend at the supermarket, I was delighted to see that the “He Gets Us” campaign ran another commercial during this year’s Super Bowl.

You wouldn’t think the campaign would continue to stir controversy, but it does. Sometimes, the mere existence of something can ruffle feathers.

When the “He Gets Us” campaign ran its first Super Bowl commercial two years ago, the controversy stemmed mostly from atheistic and anti-Christian groups prior to the Super Bowl. Their concern was that a game that celebrates achievement, pride, gluttony and pleasure would be ruined by a religious message.

That they got was this ad instead:

Something interesting happened after that. The dissenting voices of atheism and the anti-Christian communities died down, and voices of opposition rose from within Christianity itself.

The campaign was ridiculed for departing from mainstream Christianity, with many claiming it was theologically shallow and didn’t proclaim any real truth from the Bible.

Then, He Gets Us rattled the cages again in 2024 with this message:

The message that provoked response in this ad was the depictions of Christians, preachers, and the so-called good people of the world washing the feet of people who are living in sin. You see the feet of pro-abortion activists being washed outside an abortion clinic, of illegal immigrants feet being washed, while at the same time foot washings being shared between people of different races and people who obviously would be at odds with each other.

The commercial closed out with the caption that Jesus didn’t teach hate, He washed feet. This ad drew criticism, with opponents saying that Jesus did not merely go around washing feet, but that the foot-washing was performed on His disciples to teach them humility.

This discussion brought to light the central point of conflict between the He Gets Us campaign (funded heavily by Hobby Lobby owner David Green) and Christian fundamentalists. That point of conflict is this: The He Gets Us campaign lacks theological depth, drifts from what the Bible actually says about Jesus, and fails to present the plan of salvation.

If we’re being honest, those criticisms are not without merit. The question is, however, does that make the He Gets Us campaign bad?

Let’s consider that question with this story in mind.

Imagine there is a lady in your church. Let’s give her a name. She’s going to be Miss Martha.

Miss Martha is an 80-year-old widow who attends church faithfully, serves in the ladies auxiliary, and has a special pecan pie recipe that has become a staple of the church potluck dinners.

After church last Sunday, Miss Martha went to lunch at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken. As she ordered her food and paid, she noticed the unmistakable presence of a baby bump in her cashier’s abdomen.

Miss Martha asked when she was due, and how much she looked forward being a mother. The conversation was friendly, and Miss Martha learned a little about her new cashier friend.

Miss Martha then told the young woman, “I know you have to work a lot of Sundays, but if you get the chance, we’d love to have you at church next Sunday.”

Maybe Miss Martha invited the young woman to evening service, or Wednesday night prayer meeting. All would be typical in such a conversation.

Now, the question about Miss Martha’s interaction with the KFC cashier is this, “Did Miss Martha do a bad thing by holding the conversation with the young woman, inviting her to church, without presenting the Gospel to her or having a deeper Biblical discussion with her?”

Some would say yes. I think Ray Comfort may have some words to say about that.

However, I disagree.

It’s never a bad thing to have a conversation with someone, to express to someone that they have value and are loved, to issue an invitation to church, and to create an opportunity for someone to consider their faith and Spiritual condition. I believe if we actually took an interest in people, got to know them, and connected with them in an authentic way that was not merely for the purpose of notching a conversion on our belt, I think we may see some better results.

The mission of the commercial campaign for “He Gets Us” is not to place Gospel-centered content in a secular entertainment setting. (That’s actually something I aspire to.)

The purpose of the He Gets Us campaign is to snag the attention of those who are lost and are not considering Spiritual things, and get them thinking. It’s about presenting a side of Christianity that recognizes the brokenness of life, the differences in our backgrounds, and our propensity for conflict, but wants to work through that to find healing.

And while I whole-heartedly agree that the Gospel is absolutely essential to accomplishing that goal, and that deeper theological discussions must take place to bring salvation and transformation into the lives of the lost, I would be remiss if I didn’t relay the fact that the He Gets Us campaign does exactly that.

Take Miss Martha for instance. Suppose she comes back to KFC next week, meets the same cashier, has another light-hearted, pleasant conversation with her, and learns more about her. Maybe this continues for a few weeks. Maybe the baby is born, and the young cashier shows Miss Martha pictures.

Suppose Miss Martha takes the young woman one of her popular pecan pies, and maybe they meet outside of KFC for once. Maybe Miss Martha mentors the young woman, and ultimately takes her to church one day. What could happen?

Hopefully, if Miss Martha goes to a good church, that young woman will hear the Gospel, solid Bible teaching, and be saved and converted.

The He Gets Us campaign works the same way. It seeks to engage people who are not engaged Spiritually, ascribing value to them and proclaiming that they are loved. At the end of every commercial and YouTube video, there is a Web address. If you go to that Web address, you will find Bible teaching and content that steers you toward the Gospel. And, while you may not find that content to be deep enough or theological enough, it does provide the opportunity to connect with a Bible mentor, or counselor, via text, phone or email.

And here’s the best part. These mentors are not located in a call center in Oklahoma. They are in your hometown.

It’s true. Local pastors and Bible teachers can register with the site, and if someone from their area is wanting to be connected with a real person, He Gets Us connects the pastor with the seeker, thereby facilitating the teaching of the Gospel and deeper Bible content. Discipleship can then begin at that point, and the seeker can be connected and plugged in to a local church.

Is this the most economical way to do this? Is it efficient? Does it work?

I don’t know. I will say, having read two of David Green’s books, he doesn’t have much patience for things that do not work. To answer that question, we’d have to see the ledgers and the data that He Gets Us would keep concerning their reach and conversions. I’m not holding my breath that they’re going to make that public any time soon.

I will say, that having a business and marketing background, I can see how it would all come down to numbers.

One Super Bowl ad will cost about $7 million. That ad will reach about 125 million viewers. The cost per thousand on that one ad is $56. This is almost twice the cost of a Roku ad, which typically sells for $30 per 1,000 viewers, and almost six times the cost of a radio ad, which usually runs about $10 per 1,000 listeners. It’s expensive, but there’s added value in the fact that you are reaching the multitude simultaneously, something nearly impossible in other media.

Now, let’s suppose that only 1/2 of a percent actually go to the website. That’s 625,000 visitors to the He Gets Us website. If only 1/2 of a percent reach out to a local pastor, that’s 3,125 solid Gospel conversations that can take place. If only 1/3 of those result in a profession of faith, you have approximately 1,000 souls saved, on a $7 million investment made from the excesses of billionaire businessmen.

We don’t put a dollar figure on the cost of seeing a soul saved. But, if we calculated the amount spent per soul saved, it would come out to $7,000.

I realize this type of analysis may be a little provocative. I don’t intend to be provocative. But, I will say that many of my church’s outreach efforts were not near as fiscally efficient as that.

None of this means that you have to like the He Gets Us campaign, and it certainly does not mean that this is the best way to do evangelism. However, I hope this adds understanding of what is happening and puts some context on the commercials you see on TV.

Furthermore, I hope this motivates you and inspires you to find ways you can engage people in your community who are not currently being engaged with the Gospel.

May God bless you as you serve Him.

I’m adding the Be Childlike ad because I like it:

Broken People: How the Flaws of the Bible Patriarchs Turned Jordan Peterson toward the Bible

Why are some people successful, while others fail? Beyond work ethic, why do some seem to have a natural ability to connect with others, negotiate, identify the right path forward, and succeed? Meanwhile, others struggle just to get through the day?

What is truth? How can we learn through scientific process the answers to these questions?

Such has been the life’s mission of Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who teaches courses at several universities including the University of Toronto, who’s also written several books and is currently hosting a podcast series for the Daily Wire.

Peterson rose to fame while doing a BBC interview about one of his books, in which the interviewer repeatedly asked pointed questions in an attempt to be able to discredit him as a misogynist or a racist. His fame continued to grow as videos of his college lectures, his public lecture series, and a podcast series on the Bible began to go viral online.

While the controversial BBC interview launched him to fame, the logic, academic approach to psychology and human nature, and the conclusions he articulates have kept him in the spotlight, so much so that he took a sabbatical and no one noticed due to the ubiquity of this content online.

Peterson looked to the Bible for psychology. He looked to the Bible to learn behavioral patterns, learn lessons, and map out a framework for how to tackle life’s challenges, taking object lessons from the Old Testament patriarchs. What he found was truth. Moreover, Peterson found that all truth is preconditioned on the Bible.

He went so far as to say, “Without the Bible, there can be no truth.”

So, how does an atheistic psychologist who preached secularism come to a faith in the truth of the Bible, and go on to a faith in the existence of God (per his statements in his videos)?

In a video lecture before a university audience, the question was posed, “Do you believe that the Bible is true?” To which Peterson responded, “If not the Bible, then what is true?”

Peterson went on to make the case that, in reading the Bible, you read about the lives of the patriarchs, and the scriptures include not only their stories of victory, but also their failures.

Peterson noted how many of these failures were major, and some of the patriarchs were rotten people, and did rotten things. He pointed out that for religious texts, this is unusual.

In this video, which I can no longer find on YouTube, Peterson said that most religious texts portray the good side of the founders of the religion, and hide their flaws and failures. The Bible, on the other hand, showed the patriarchs of the Christian faith for who they were, including their frailties, failures, and brokenness. The result was an honest, transparent representation of the Christian faith, and furthermore, an amazing demonstration of God’s power.

God was able to work through the brokenness of man to accomplish His will. That resonated with Peterson, who began to explore the Bible more, and has now embarked on a podcast series to explore the Bible more deeply.

As a result of God working through the brokenness of man thousands of years ago, you have a secular professor exploring the Bible, going so far as to declare that it is the precondition for all truth, and calling on people to turn to God or face His wrath. While his views and doctrine may not line up with ours, I believe that, for the sake of the Gospel, we can see how a man whose primary audience includes college students and intellectual leaders can benefit the Kingdom of God greatly through his scholarly presentations of scripture.

Students today are generally guided away from the Bible, away from God, and toward their own subjective perceptions of truth, which the intellectual left seeks to shape through media, entertainment and education. Peterson, on the other hand, is leading students to go back to the Bible as the foundation of all truth, if not the very foundation of our society itself.

And his journey down this road began when he discovered how God worked through the brokenness of Abraham, Jacob, David, among others.

God works through broken people, and He is glorified through His work through the lives of broken people. He is glorified in that His name is made known, His power is shown, and people are faced with His undeniable truth.

God works through broken people. So we need not be discouraged when we find ourselves struggling with brokenness, neither do we need to be disillusioned when those whom we admire fail. God works through the brokenness to bring about His glory, and the blessings He has promised.

The Jesus Revolution’s Frisbee Problem

Let’s face it… for fans of The Chosen, Jonathan Roumie sold The Jesus Revolution. Roumie’s portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen has earned him a following, a ministry, and has contributed to a national conversation about Jesus, leading many to seek the truth about Jesus, and many have professed faith in Christ as a result.

So, it comes with a bit of irony that in The Jesus Revolution, Roumie portrays a young Lonnie Frisbee, whose emotionally compassionate outreach and charismatic preaching sparked The Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, thus sparking a national conversation about Jesus which led to many salvations.

Neither man (Roumie or Frisbee) is without controversy, as is neither character portrayed. Jesus was controversial in His day, and remains so to this day. And with a resurgence of post-morten fame on the heels of Jesus Revolution, Frisbee finds himself in the middle of controversy as well.

At the center of Frisbee’s controversy are his theatrical antics, and his struggles with homosexuality. Critics point to the former to discredit his ministry, and they point out the latter to discredit Christianity in general.

To their credit, the filmmakers of The Jesus Revolution were open about the character flaws of each of the leaders of the movement. Smith was a bit opportunistic and judgmental, and struggled with seeing the church blossom under someone else’s leadership. Laurie struggled with drugs early on and struggled with faith toward the end of the movie.

Frisbee demanded the spotlight, neglected his wife, and stormed out in a hissy fit when the spotlight was taken away. Yes, his struggles with homosexuality were omitted from the movie, but were not an issue during the time portrayed in the movie.

Frisbee was raped as a child, and as many who endure that atrocity do, experimented with homosexuality during his adolescence and early adulthood. Frisbee reported coming out of that lifestyle when he came to know Jesus, but relapsed in the 1980s. Frisbee confessed that his behaviors were sin, and were as sinful (but no more than) other sins.

When confronted, Frisbee confessed. He prayed for forgiveness. He tried to help others find forgiveness. He did not cling to the lifestyle, and did not advocate that others live the lifestyle.

It would be sinful and unproductive to try to determine Frisbee’s salvation status, or whether his faith was real, and his ministry motivated by faith and a genuine heart for the Lord. We leave the judging of the living and the dead to God.

However, a quick internet search into Frisbee’s life reveals a struggle with sin which is not unlike the struggle with pornography, addiction, anger, gluttony (I confess that!), hate, covetousness or dishonesty.

As Christians, we often find ourselves easily ensnared in sin that rapidly gets out of hand and gruesome pretty quickly. Sometimes we deceive ourselves into thinking that our sin isn’t that big of a deal, but it is.

And we can usually find a worse sinner to point out to make ourselves feel better about our sin. And in this case, that worse sinner is Frisbee.

However, the political fireball surrounding his sin neither discredits the Bible, the Gospel, nor the film, because all three uphold the fact that God works through the broken, and through weakness we are made strong.

Frisbee struggled with homosexuality, but Abraham committed adultery, Jacob was a crook, Judah hired a prostitute, King David committed adultery and murder, and Solomon dabbled in idolatry. Yet, Scripture holds those men up as patriarchs of the faith, and some even wrote scripture.

Scripture does not affirm their behavior, but God used them in spite of their brokenness, and God uses us in spite of our brokenness.

Why would God do that? He does that because the premise of the Gospel is that the broken can be healed, the sinner can be cleansed, and the condemned can be redeemed. Further, this all happens not because of how great the person is, but because of how graceful and powerful God is.

And that’s the power of the Gospel, that the death and condemnation of our sins was placed on Christ when He hung on that cross, and when He died, that death and condemnation were sent to Hell instead of us.

And because of that redemption, because Jesus took it all on our behalf, we can go free. We can place our faith in Him and make ourselves available for God to use to do big things… or maybe small and simple things. Either way, it’s a blessing.

So I’m not offended that one of my favorite actors portrayed a man who struggled in homosexuality, and I’m not discouraged that such a man was a key figure in a national revival, because I have routinely seen God use broken people, including myself, to lead others to redemption and healing.

God uses the broken to advance the Gospel, and He is glorified in it. Or as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3, “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?”

So let’s review. God is good. Redemption is real. The Gospel saves. The Jesus Revolution is a good movie. And God has used the broken to spark a national conversation about Jesus. Let’s have that conversation, and point people to the redemption in Christ Jesus that is found at the cross, and not let ourselves be distracted by one man’s sin from 40 years ago.

Who through Faith…

Why do we think of faith as an abstract? And why do we doubt the power of faith?

It makes no sense to downplay the importance of faith, nor does it make sense to doubt its power, not with so many tangible examples of how faith has changed our nation.

Today, our nation honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who through his faith forever transformed our nation from a society of systemic racism and segregation to a nation that aspires to live up to its founding principles.

It would be naive to say that we live in a post-racial America, and I believe that there is still much to be done to achieve the racial healing and reconciliation of which Dr. King dreamed.

However, it would be self-defeating to fail to recognize the progress that has been made, and the cause of that progress.

Dr. King was motivated by a dream, a dream built on the foundations of his core convictions, which were born of his faith.

That faith was in the God almighty, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To deny this is to deny the sermons Dr. King preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, or his belief in the power of Agape love to not only bring about racial equality, but reconciliation as well.

To deny Dr. King’s faith as his motivation is to deny an entire paragraph of his “I Have A Dream” speech, which states, “This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.

“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

To deny the faith of Dr. King and to deny the scriptures as the source of that faith is to deny the Biblical imagery that defined his speeches, whether the carving of the stone of hope from the mountain of despair, to the mountaintop Dr. King said the Lord took him to, allowing him to see the promised land.

To deny the faith of Dr. King is to deny his optimism, fully communicated in his speeches, which came from his belief that God would bring his dream to fruition, even if not fully realized until the coming of the Lord.

Dr. King’s legacy of racial equality, national repentance, and racial reconciliation cannot be denied. Neither can the faith be denied which moved him to lead this national transformation. Faith in the Lord brings amazingly great things.

Hebrews 11:33 says, “Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, and stopped the mouths of lions.” Hebrews 2:20 says that faith without works is dead. In other words, faith motivates action, and when faith motivates action, great changes happen.

As we remember and celebrate the accomplishments of Dr. King, and the transformation he led America through, let us not forget the faith that birthed it all.

Furthermore, let’s remember that the next great advancement in our society, whatever it may be, will not be born from a desire for significance, a desire for change, or a change at the ballot box. The next great advancement will come when the people of God act on their faith and carry God’s amazing message to the people.

With this faith… we advance.