For years, the He Gets Us campaign has targeted sports entertainment with their advertising campaign in which they often depict a lukewarm, liberal version of Jesus wherein he becomes a refugee. For the past three years, they have spent tens of millions on Superbowl ads and we were early to provide a deep dive of who they were at the time as well as expose the theological influences behind the campaign. In 2024, the He Gets Us campaign was under the new management of the Come Near Foundation with much of the thought and infrastructure remaining the same. They proceeded to air AI-generated images wherein they depicted Christians as the “bad guys” in a campaign that was generally lampooned.
After a contentious election year in which many liberal ideas were routed at the ballot box, the question is asked, does He Gets Us actually get us? Furthermore, what developments have occurred with the organization?
2025 Superbowl Ad
He Gets Us was a late confirmation to return to the Superbowl, in which they spent $16 million on a 60 second ad in which it poses the question, “What is greatness?” The ad plays the song Personal Jesus, which is a song about “being Jesus to someone” that while it might seem well-intended, is a very man-centric view of Christ that disregards His divinity and mediatorial work. The meaning of the song’s lyrics ultimately depends on the singer, not the words themselves. For example, Johnny Cash famously liked the song and made a cover for it. However, the meaning completely changes when a degenerate Satanist like Marilyn Manson covers it, in which a man can become Jesus.
The images throughout the ad portray various acts of everyday kindness as greatness, like firefighters, two friends having coffee, or helping an incompetent driver in the snow in New York City. But then it has an image of the words “Get Out” being power-washed off a home of a presumably immigrant family with a child watching from the window. Already, this ad is signifying that calls for mass deportation or anti-immigrant sentiments are unlike Jesus—ignoring that the borders, magistrates, and nations are instituted by God. The American people voted for mass deportations at the ballot box, not amnesty.
After that, there is a presumed Christian street preacher receiving a hug from a homosexual at what is clearly a gay pride parade. What is definitely not portrayed is that the Christian is converting the homosexual away from his gayness who then walks away from the gay pride parade. Instead, it shows the Christian, with a John 3:16 hat, hugging the man in the middle of the parade, which looks far more like affirmation than repentance. Greatness is going to a pride festival and embracing homosexuals in their sin.
The ad’s message is that greatness comes from everyday acts of kindness and being a “personal Jesus” to other people, but as with all other He Gets Us ads, it portrays Jesus as merely a Man. Furthermore, it undermines the concept of greatness where if everything is greatness, then nothing is—not even Jesus. The greatness of Christ is that the Son took on human flesh to redeem the Church, but He Gets Us does not get Jesus.
Compassion International Connections
Who runs the He Gets Us campaign? Compassion International is a major Christian Charity, similar to Samaritans Purse, only that they are most notorious for their “adoption” based missions wherein one can “adopt” and help a specific child in a third world country. They have a broad outreach strategy which often involves working with churches of all stripes—good and bad. For example, they were involved in a “Strategic Ministry Alliance” with the financially scandalous Hillsong. Nevertheless, they are generally perceived as reputable within American Christianity. What is interesting is that several of their former employees now oversee and operate the Come Near Foundation and by extension the He Gets Us campaign.
While it is laughable that in 2025 a supposedly Christian CEO still has Pronouns in his bio, Calwell has a distinguished career in fast-food marketing working for Dominos and Wendy’s before becoming CEO of Papa Murphy’s from 2011-2017. After that, he began working at Compassion International where he served as the Chief Marketing Officer until November of 2023. Calwell is not the only face from Compassion International associated with Come Near.
Yaro Hetman is the VP of Marketing and Innovation. Hetman made his career at Ford, where he specialized in marketing their commercial vehicles and even their BEV truck, the F150 Lightening. Given his background, Hetman is a major advocate for US involvement in the Ukraine War. In 2022, under Hetman, Compassion International sold NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) which raised $220,000 in an appeal to get youths to donate to charity. As an aside, the use of NFTs, which are the equivalent of digital trading cards, is a strange, and perhaps unethical, way to raise money as they are selling a fictional asset in exchange for money. Hetman also appealed to Twitch and other gaming platforms during his time at CI.
Beto Menegocci is the Chief Operations Officer at Come Near. He also worked at Compassion International in finance. Even their Head of Communications, Emily Birschbach, also worked at Compassion International for six years. For an organization that has a small, mostly remote workplace, their talent pool has much crossover with Compassion International.
Other notable charities whose personnel are associated with Come Near include Chasity McReynolds, the Chief Investor Relations Officer, who worked for Scouts of America (Boy Scouts); and Rob Hoskins, President of OneHope, who chairs the board. OneHope is a media company that specializes in printing gospel tracks and boasts the endorsements of Craig Groeschel while having partnered with various Christian charities, good and bad.
Discontentment Content
Recently, the He Gets Us campaign has launched a series on “Discontentment” where they use “survey data” to argue that “everyone is sick of something.” This is readily apparent on their homepage. In November, they conducted a survey of Americans in which they categorized their responses into buckets.
The categorization is extremely generic, and if one plays around on the homepage, it becomes quite apparent how they gathered their data. They are using large numbers to bolster their campaign and make it relevant to anyone, yet the data is rather generic and trite, ultimately making it useless for everyone.
Basically, they asked a couple of thousand people what they were “most sick of” and they pooled the responses into the categories, irrespective of whether the answers were conflicting. For example, if one said they were sick of the Ukraine War, that would be part of the 84% who are sick of violence. If they were sick of immigration, that would be “social issues & divisiveness.” The same category would when entering “gays.” Surprisingly, “Incels” was also bucketed under “social issues & divisiveness”, and it did recognize “SSRIs” as “societal health.” The “incel” categorization becomes more ironic when “women” is bucketed under “Personal Struggles.” It used an algorithmic sorting hat that buckets opposing views under the same category. Ironically, while Trump was bucketed under Politics, there was no response for Musk.
In January, they released video content based on this data, with Trey Hill going around the nation to interview people about why they are discontent in a YouTube series. The series features four short videos that contain some interviews in line with the generic theme of He Gets Us, believing that understanding the discontentment will make Jesus more appealing. YouTuber Carlos Whittaker is featured to emphasize the need for greater “empathy,” which is a longstanding liberal buzzword. Whittaker is a Christian “influencer” who specializes in “self-help” Christianity.
The videos attempt to portray Jesus as one who “listened to people” when Scripture depicts Christ teaching more than it ever does Him listening. He already knew the struggles of the people, which dictated the interactions with various believers and unbelievers in the Gospel Accounts. This is a continuation of their version of Jesus who hangs out with the lowly which disregards that He, being a physician, healed them of their sinful lifestyles rather than coddled them.
In line with the brand, the first video features someone complaining about the stigmatization of immigrants, a boomer white woman complaining about “willful ignorance,” and a black transvestite complaining about “a lot of rejection.” All of these are liberal framings. They did not feature someone complaining about H1B’s stealing their jobs, victims of illegal immigrant’s criminal acts, a government that cares more about foreigners than Americans, etc. Instead, everything comports to a liberal frame. In the fourth video, the same tranny would quote Jesus saying to “love thy neighbor” when his lifestyle is in clear violation of the Second Table which is summarized in the phrase.
In the fourth video, Trey Hill reveals that “trying His way changed me” which is to say he felt impacted by his mini-documentary, yet he then goes on to say “It didn’t make me a believer or change my opinions about church.” Now, Hill is a director and photographer who has worked with LERMA (the ad agency) on the He Gets Us campaign, specifically the “Who is My Neighbor?” commercial which prominently features a transvestite. If as the director, his unbelief was not swayed by the He Gets Us campaign despite making the content, how could it change the hearts of the unbelievers? The inefficacy is attested to by the very people involved in the campaign.
Conclusion
For the He Gets Us campaign, they hired a seemingly impressive pool of talent to deliver on their massive ad campaign, with many veterans from major corporations, most notably Ford. Their connections to Compassion International, while not problematic for the charity itself, should have yielded a more effective ad campaign, yet the tendencies of He Gets Us to rely on nonbelievers to market Jesus to the masses inevitably produces a Jesus who appeals to nonbelievers while disregarding Christ’s mediatorial role in the Triune godhead. Their “What is Greatness” ad undermines the greatness of our God. Their discontentment campaign does nothing to deliver the Gospel but rather coddles sinners on their way to hell under the guise of empathy.
He Gets Us neither understands Jesus nor the current environment in America today, where the largest revival happening is on the white males who innately detest the He Gets Us campaign.
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