The story is unnecessarily national. You are bound to misread the room if the room has got 350 million people in it and you're just going by the loudest, angriest voices.
SPEAKER_03The most controversial Super Bowl ad ever. Apparently, Jesus with a foot fetish is the way Buzzfeed took this ad. I see a place for larger outreaches like this. I think the danger with an angle that's very common within evangelism, where you say, Don't look at the church, just look at Jesus. And that's just churchi. I'm into Christianity. But the whole time Jesus is saying, That's my bride there. Hi, I'm Glenn. This is Nate. We're from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus, including the most controversial Super Bowl ad ever. Apparently, Jesus with a foot fetish is the way Buzzfeed uh sort of took this ad. Uh did you did you watch it live, Nate? I know you stood you you stayed up for the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER_06I did, I did, I did see it live. And um yeah. Um I I didn't really actually think that much about it. I was concentrating on on the game and on uh how many times uh Taylor Swift was gonna be shown. That was really what I was there for uh to watch.
SPEAKER_03Just for just for Taylor, but um they tried to squeeze in some Jesus and they they paid for two spots, they paid for a 60-second spot, and I think the other spot was only 15 seconds. Okay. Let's watch the 60-second ad called Foot Washington. So lots of still photography, same as last year, because the He Gets Us people were in black and white last year. A lot of people thinking this is AI. It's not AI. It is uh a very fine photographer whose name I've forgotten. Family Planning Clinic. Lots of people washing each other's feet. Some people seem to be mutually washing one another's feet. Yep. Others are in the more subservient position. Immigrant family.
SPEAKER_04Two worlds collide. Two sets of protesters, and the sum.
SPEAKER_03A cover of in access, two worlds collide. Jesus didn't teach hate. He washed feet. We can live all of us. Jesus. There we go. That was the ad, and uh yeah.
SPEAKER_06I mean they're great, they're great for to uh photographs, uh they're nice tableaus, public position. I think I would have liked to look at one of them. I think in a minute. Uh could you have done something emotionally resonant in a minute? Uh maybe not. I'm just actually glad that we're continuing to have a conversation about making short form video content which tells people about Jesus. Yeah. In in part because that's kind of been our job for the last you know, 15-20 years is being involved in how do you present Jesus on camera or you know, yeah, in in a video form. You want to share the gospel, and so yeah, this is kind of right in the sweet spot of what Speak Life has been doing um for years now. So it's great to be having another conversation about how is it being done, how can it be done better.
SPEAKER_03That's true. And so let let's look at what they are trying to do. So I'll take you to the He Gets Us homepage where you have this auto-playing video How did the story of Jesus, the world's greatest love story, get twisted into a tool to judge, harm, and divide. How do we remind people? The story of Jesus belongs to everyone.
SPEAKER_06These questions are the beating heart of He Gets Us.
SPEAKER_03So you're confronted straight away with the story of Jesus has gotten twisted into a message of hate, apparently. Apparently, and I think that is a big apparently. Yeah. And rather than question whether there are any myths to bust around that, they sort of embrace that. Yeah. Clearly, uh clearly, institutional Christianity has done a really bad job. Yeah. Okay, this is the cynic in me. Okay, yeah. The cynic in me is is taking their goal and reading it as okay, institutional Christianity is far too easily identified with hatred and bigotry. Um, sometimes the church is to blame. We're here to rescue the true Jesus love story from the clutches of those who twist it into a tool for hatred, and we will show you that the real Jesus is is not like the Jesus or the Christianity that that you assumed that it was. Yes. So I've got questions about whether um whether you should bust that myth rather than simply embrace it and say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Institutional Christianity um is the worst. Yeah, yeah. But the true Jesus revolutionary would be nothing like the Christianity that you have encountered, and let us show you this radical new thing. Um, I'm not sure that's the that's the way to go, and I'm I'm not even sure that that is actually consonant with the the aims of He Gets Us. When you go onto the website, you see this trending page, He Gets Us has an agenda.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And again they say, you know, how did the story of a man who taught and practiced unconditional love become associated with hatred and oppression for so many people? And it kind of takes two to tango on that. You know, it's it's not as though everyone who calls Christians hateful has a true assessment of the situation. May maybe their sin has just been uncovered and they want to call it bigotry when actually they're under conviction. Yeah. So why why assume that every accusation of hatred and bigotry that is aimed at the church is genuine?
SPEAKER_06And what do they and what do they mean so many people? As in if they started with It's starting with the assumption that there are so many people. Well, kind of one sense, this is this is a sociological statement, right? We've been out there and we've realized that when you mention Jesus, seven out of ten Americans say, yeah, that's a story of hatred and oppression, isn't it? It's like, well, where's the proof on that?
SPEAKER_03Well, if you go to their page, he gets us has an agenda. Uh, about the third paragraph down, it says, We've done a lot of homework on our culture. They said we've researched how people feel about each other and what they think about Jesus and Christianity. We've connected with thousands of people of various faith traditions and those who claim no religion. We spoke to all kinds of people, different backgrounds, beliefs, and yes, political affiliations. And the politics thing comes up again and again on the website. Very political, yeah, yeah. And they sort of say, look, we're not political. It's an election year, so it's really important not to be political. Did you know it's 2024? There's an election. So it's important not to be political. Um And this is what we've learnt from politics to sexuality and religion. So many of us feel like our values, beliefs, and identities are under attack by the ideological others around us. Many perceive those who differ with them on issues of justice, dignity, and humanity as not just wrong or misguided, but also as evil, as enemies. We often see these others as close-minded, selfish, hypocritical, and if we're honest, many of us respond in kind. Now, okay, so they've got done a lot of they've done a lot of research and they've asked people about the issues of the day, and they found found that polarization is a thing. Correct, polarization is a thing. But I thought you were doing homework on how people thought about Jesus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, this is the whole talk in Jesus survey thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Right? So in the UK, uh uh I can't remember the name of the organization.
SPEAKER_03So Hope, uh, together with uh Chris uh the Church of England and a number of different and and Evangelical Alliance put together this survey.
SPEAKER_06And the point was they did uh their research, they went out, they asked all these people what they thought about Christianity and Christians and the church and Jesus, and the stuff that came back was hey, everyone's ready to hear about Jesus. There's loads of people who are just waiting to be invited to church because they know Christians and they like them. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06And everyone went, that can't be true. Yeah. You need to do that research again. So they went and did it. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03My friends, because my friends all think I'm a bigot. Maybe that's on you. Yeah. No, I've been on Twitter.
SPEAKER_06I've seen everyone hates each other, and everyone hates Christians, and everyone hates Jesus. But this the piece of research that they did proved to be far more optimistic about people's initial responses to the invitation to come and hear more about Jesus at Church than anyone believed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And yet here I don't I can't currently see, and I've not looked at all the research or the homework that they've done, but where is the stat that says it really is as bad as it looks on Twitter?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And what you're doing is we're supposed to call it. No, come on, it's Twitter. It'll always be Twitter. So and yeah, as though what kind of data would you require in order to think that the thing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on, which they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this campaign, would be to change perceptions around the church on race and sexuality and those sorts of issues. Like you you would have to have some some pretty clear data, I would have thought. The data we do have, and it's done by people like Jim Davis and Michael Graham, together with Ryan Burge. Ryan Burge, who's the sociologist, they they wrote together this book called The Great De Churching, talking about uh 40 million Americans have left church this century. And it's the greatest demographic shift that has happened in US history.
SPEAKER_0610% or something, or maybe just over 10%.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, over 10% of the US population was in church and is no longer in church over the last two decades. And and what you might assume from that is that it's the hashtag exvangelical movement has just swept the the board. Right. It's just hashtag empty the pews, it's all about church abuse. Now we on this channel take church abuse very, very seriously, and we've we've covered a lot of that and we think that's a very serious issue. But when you do the stats on why people do not l no longer go to church, uh the greatest reason why people no longer go to church in the in the States is they moved. They moved City. Yeah. And they just got out of the habit of going. Or Jimmy's got little league on Sunday morning. Yeah. So I guess we can't do church anymore.
SPEAKER_06So there's a far more banal and mundane kind of set of reasons why people have left the church than these kind of explosive, kind of toxic outrage, yeah. Ex-evangelical kind of church abuse.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I sort of had that thought this morning. Like, how do you how do you look at the He Gets Us um campaign through the lens of there are 40 million Christians, 40 million Americans who have left church in the last two decades, 30 million of them would go back to church just with an invitation, right? Okay. Like uh a very large number would simply if you just asked them. So, like, if you've got hundreds of millions to spend on a campaign, wouldn't it be? And so I I reached out to Michael Graham, one of the authors, and uh and I said, you know, hey Michael, we're doing a He Gets Us video later today, looking through the lens of the Great De Churching at the aims of the campaign. Do you think there was a missed opportunity to actually target these 40 million? He said, That's exactly it. Thirty of the forty million left for pragmatic reasons like these are the top three. I moved. Attendance was inconvenient for me. A family change like marriage, remarriage, divorce, or a new child. They left unintentionally, and most who left evangelical churches are willing to return today. There is huge low-hanging fruit. Some need a nudge, some need our dinner table, but it doesn't look like it's a massive ask on us. The bottom line we want to leave people with is this take relational risk, especially with someone God is consistently putting right in front of you. And so he he's like, Do we need to change the cultural climate out there with a whole bunch of Super Bowl ads? Well, maybe maybe, or you know, maybe we just need to ask our friends and neighbors and take the root the relational risk. Um, and then Michael left this voice note, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
SPEAKER_01You know, I think the story had been had gotten stuck on all these people leaving churches before before, because the story was always that they had left intentionally, and they had left because of forces at the cultural level for which we have no power or no agency to really do anything about as individuals or even institutional leaders. The two big stories that were there that were being told before this was if your media didn't lean a little bit left, the story was, well, people have left the church because of racism, misogyny, clergy scandal, clergy abuse, and political syncretism. Okay, five huge forces in American culture and society. If your media diet leaned a little bit right, then the story that was being told there was, well, people have left primarily left churches because of primarily secular progressivism and the sexual revolution. Well, if I'm just one person, or even if I'm a the leader of a large Christian institution, can I really make a dent in racism, misogyny, clergy scandal, clergy abuse, political syncretism, secular progressivism, or the sexual revolution? No. Those forces are way too large and way too powerful, way too embedded for me to make any real substantive difference except on the extremely hyper-local level. However, what we want to say is can you find of the 40 million people, can you find a few million people that fit either of those two stories? Yes, yes, you can, because it's a law of large numbers. However, what we're saying is that the largest story is a really boring story, and that most people have left for really pragmatic reasons that are pretty basic. And because they've left primarily for really pragmatic reasons, if we you know if we relate well with them with relational wisdom, and we're working on building healthy local churches, then people are going to be willing to return to the church. And you know, we already know that half the people who left American evangelical churches are willing to return today, which is bonkers when you consider that some of those people have been out of you know out of those churches for 25 plus years. So hopefully that helps.
SPEAKER_03Very good. Then he just writes, our story is a hopeful one because it's a boring one. You know. Millions millions of Americans having left church for for boring reasons, for pragmatic reasons. Um, so here's one way of spending a he gets us budget. Just, you know, big up local church, yeah. Yeah. And I think the danger with um an angle that that's very common within evangelism, where you say, Oh yeah, institutional Christianity, I uh recognize the huge problems. Don't look at the church, just look at Jesus. And that's just churchanity. I'm into Christianity. But the whole time Jesus is saying, That's my bride there. Yeah, yeah. You know, and by this all people will know you're my disciples because the because of the loving union of church. And so it just seems like uh you're shooting yourself in the foot with an evangelistic strategy that that could be seen as throwing the church under the bus, I think.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think that's completely the case. And it's really helpful to get his uh insights on yeah, it's most people are living much more boring lives with much less extreme views than you might think based upon your media consumption. And so it's one of the issues around making a Super Bowl ad is that when you're using these kind of tableau of you know, like eight, nine, ten, however many it was, you've got these different tableaus. Each of those figures in the images ceases to be an individual and becomes a cipher for this is a black gay man. Right, right. And so therefore he is all black gay men, or whatever it might be, or this is a you know kind of and so the the the and interestingly the ads that work best, the ads that have the biggest emotional resonance are the ads which are much smaller stories. And so it would have been possible to maybe take one of those images and to spend sixty seconds telling us the story of this girl in the high school washing the feet of this girl in the high school, and with just a couple of shot reverse shot kind of and a nice bit of music and a sense of this person is doing something out of the ordinary and special and kind and compassionate and whatever, right? Now you've got us by the by the heartstrings and now we can see that there might be a value in these individuals.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And because everything is iconic and therefore representative of we're living in a divided world, um, what what then happens is the the beauty the beauty of the foot washing, which is kind of the Lord reaching across the divide to sinful humanity and washing even Judas's feet, gets transposed into let us reach across the aisle of political differences. But then then you have to say, well, like who is the Lord in that? And who is Judas? And what was uh you know, Jesus feasts with sinners, which is a scandal that's really worth pressing into and it's subversive, and that's a great hook for evangelism. But when you transpose it into so therefore the left you know ought to have dinner parties with the right, um, you're then you're then casting them in cultural and political things. And and then your repentance becomes not so much, oh, I need to give up sin and go to the Lord, but I I need to be the sort of person who reaches across the aisle. But when you are painting with such a broad brush as he gets us does, um both sides kind of might might well feel misrepresented by that, and and certainly you know, more conservative Christians feel feel very gotten at, I think, by these.
SPEAKER_06And it's it's who have you made this ad for, right? One of the things you notice when you watch quite a bit of you know NFL, as I do, is that the ads are very sp like there are ads for trucks, right? There are ads for um insurance for trucks, and there are ads for takeaway food, right? Yeah. Because so it's always like it's pizza, insurance, and trucks. Let's let's what you've And loving your enemies, yeah. So that's what now because they're going, here's the NFL, here's the audience, we've done some work on who the typical people are watching this. Do you know what? They buy trucks, they want insurance for their trucks, yeah. And they also eat a lot of takeaway food because this is you know chill out time. So you you're targeting your ad at this thing. Once you then say, we're gonna make an ad for the whole of like for everyone who's watching the Super Bowl, which is a bigger audience this year because 123 million because Taylor's dating Trav, right? So there's there's a there's a massive audience. Now we need to speak to the whole of America.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, no, your ad is actually for like some extreme kind of political extremists in a way. Yeah. Who are thinking primarily about 2024 as a presidential election year.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Most people aren't thinking about America as like 2024 as a presidential election year at all.
SPEAKER_03They're thinking about it as are the Chiefs gonna make a comeback in the second quarter.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, or they're or they're thinking about like, you know, my um am I gonna have to put one of my uh elderly parents into a home? Yeah. Or am I gonna go to college this year? Or am I gonna like the story is is unnecessarily national in the He Gets Us campaign. It's just like you are bound to misread the room if the room has got 350 million people in it. Yep. And you're just going by the loudest, angriest voices. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Now it's no bad thing if if Christians get upset with this, that's not necessarily that's not necessarily a fail for an evangelistic campaign. Like the the fact that many Christians have gotten upset or success. Um so when we're not saying that just because uh a lot of more conservative Christians have gotten up upset, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a fail for the campaign. And to speak in defense of the campaign for a minute, you know, I I I see a place for larger outreaches like this. I really like their calls to action because what they actually want you to do, having watched that advertisement, lots of people might read it and might watch the advertisement and just think it is like a foot fetish thing, what is going on? Um but when they get to the website, there's a lot of scripture, there's a lot of Jesus, there's a lot of let me let me un unpack what the footwashing is for you. So the big call to action is do a U-Version Bible reading plan in John's Gospel, and the first one you do is all about the I am statements of Jesus, and so you're confronted, you know, full on with the person of Jesus. And I think at its best, he gets us is trying to disrupt your vision of Jesus and point you to Jesus and in a scriptural way, and then you can reach out to lots of different local churches that are part of these networks. I think like 20,000 maybe who will text you and maybe invite you to church. So I love. I love all of that. I love that it's trying to be disruptive, but it starts out by saying there's the humanity to Jesus and the divinity of Jesus. And we just want to get people interested enough in the humanity of Jesus that they then kind of might get interested in in meeting the divine Christ in Scripture. And I think already to divide up the d the humanity and divinity of Christ is you're onto a loser at that point. And what I'd what I like to do with so many of these ads is actually put a different frame around them. Instead of he gets us, really the frame is you don't get him really, do you? You thought you you thought you got him. Yeah. But he's the kind he's the kind of guy. He's the rebel who does this and he does this and and and he hates the he loves the people that you hate and you thought you got him. One of the ads from last year was Which was wonderful.
SPEAKER_06Which is a way better ad. Uh in terms of uh what's called subversive fulfillment. Yeah. Um in terms of connecting with people and then saying, Do you know how maybe your entire reading of the situation needs to be switched around? Uh so the Love Your Enemies ad, I think, was was far better because it turned the camera on us and said, Um, you thought this was about those hateful people. But yeah, right. Jesus loves the people.
SPEAKER_03Jesus loves the people we hate. You're right. I picked a side in the culture war, and I was a hater too, and Jesus stands above that and and judges us all and loves us all. And it managed to do that in 60 seconds. So I I thought that was really, really good.
SPEAKER_02Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03I quite liked the one from 2023 that a lot of people didn't like, uh, like The Rebel, and it talked about Jesus with his homies that were roaming the hood and that kind of thing. People are like, I my Bible doesn't say he roamed the hood. And I would say to people, like, if you didn't like 2023 and you still don't like 2024, I still hear those critiques, but I'll put them in in a different compartment because I I am on board with defamiliarization and updating the story and it getting its hooks into you and making you see Jesus from a different angle. But I think the disruptive thing should at that point be this is what God is like, you know, rather than what he gets us, sort of they seem to have this theology of this is the humanity of Jesus and the divinity is something. But but what if God is like this? Yeah, find out more, read your Bible, do the follow-ups that they're looking to. But therefore, because they're stuck at the humanity level, then you're stuck really at the law level, the level of the law, in which it's just like, well, love your neighbour. You know, we last year we were love your enemy, and now we've gone back to love your neighbour. Yeah. And they have depicted your neighbour as like someone who you might ordinarily despise and ostracize. Yeah. Which is good, but it's still that's still law, you know. And it's still it's still asking us to be more like Jesus, who loved across divides. And at that point, that's that just comes across as the the kind of moralizing, you know.
SPEAKER_06Now everybody, I know it's an election year, but you you you guys And argue arguably that is because your framing is a political one, right? You are because you're trying to tell the national story of you know uh the the political divides and the you know he didn't teach us to hate. Yeah. It's a political word now, the word hate. Okay. It used to be quite a personal word because people could hate things. Whereas at some point in the last 15 years, whatever it was, like hate took on this whole extra meaning to be, oh, hate is about these um these extreme groups in society. Yeah. And we, you know, hate has no home here was a kind of uh slogan from 2017, I think, was used to be on the kind of uh the yard signs. Hate has no home here. And you're thinking, well, how have we got to the point where a word as complex and as deep as the word hate is now just kind of put as a badge or a sticker on on a political um expression, and so no one thinks of them butselves as being someone who hates which is potentially what was so helpful about that um video last year. Yeah. But then this year they just went, Jesus didn't teach hate. Like well now, all anyone can think of is yeah, okay, political.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which I think explains uh Jamie Banbrick's success. Um so a Northern Irish uh YouTuber um put together a 60 second ad, and he's called it the Christian Super Bowl ad they should have made. He saves us. Let's have a look at this.
SPEAKER_04Two worlds collided, and they could never tear us apart.
SPEAKER_03He doesn't just get us, he saves us.
SPEAKER_06Such were some of you. Okay. I'll be honest, the uh the he gets us um aesthetic is doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting. And the song. And the song. Yeah. So it's interesting just to note from you know, when you're making these things, um you have the materials of audio-visual communication at your disposal, and it is worth recognizing that there is a kind of medium uh which then has a message put into it. But the thing that's feeling so powerful about that is just this simple music, this these changing still images, the very clear, readable sans serif font block capitals. So a lot of that is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting. But I do think this is a better use of those things uh than the original.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and clearly wanting to push back against he gets us. Well, he doesn't just get us, he saves us, he redeems us, he transforms us, he turns us around from former new age guru, former witch, former transgender person to um a member of the church, and such were some of you, and now we've got a more positive vision of church. And it's church as a more inclusive um body than you know many of the diversity, equity, and inclusion people might themselves generate. Yes, absolutely. Because you've actually got people from all walks of life who are welcomed through the narrow door of Christ and through repentance and faith into this community that is very diverse and that is actually transformative and doesn't just leave you um doesn't just leave you washing the feet of someone else who's also in trouble and aren't we all just complicated messes, really.
SPEAKER_06So this this has um had a lot of traction with Christians and especially with more conservative Christians who felt perhaps a little bit got at by the by the He Gets Us and I mean arguably non-Christians uh who were the potentially the target audience of the He Gets Us campaign um have entirely forgotten about the He Gets Us 60 Seconds because they got distracted by an advert for a truck or a pizza. Yes. And they ha are not having a wide conversation about this thing online and challenging each other to make you know what's your 60-second improvement. Yes. Um because many of those people don't care, they genuinely aren't bothered. They watched it, they went, Oh, that was interesting, but then they got passed me the chicken wing. Yeah. They just went on to something else. And I mean, we would hope that everyone was like paying attention. But can you also the name of that website? I saw enter it into my kitchen. Here's a challenge. Here's a real challenge, right? So if you are a Christian who is watching the Super Bowl with your non-Christian friend, right, you're thinking, I really want to like have a strong relationship with this person, as I'm inviting them over, I've got all the pizza and the wings and the the chips and whatever it is, and I'm gonna sit there and watch it. And then you recognise that the He Gets Us ad is gonna be on in you know, after the at the two-minute warning or whatever it is, and you're gonna turn to your friend, you're gonna be like, Okay.
SPEAKER_03What did you make of that?
SPEAKER_06What did you think of that? And then, like, but how much, how intense you're gonna feel about are you watching this? Are you paying attention? Like, if they stand up and say, I'm just gonna go get a drink, but no, you've rude. This was for you. This was for you to watch.
SPEAKER_03Well, but with all that in mind, I think the He Gets Us ad is not a bad kind of thought starter, conversation starter, as of as opposed to, I mean, this is a lot to take in. I think the footwashing thing is is kind of it's trying to do one thing uh and spark a conversation that is not the entirety of the gospel, and you know, might get people thinking about Jesus crossing boundaries and that that sort of thing. So it I think it is contextualized to that you're sitting on the couch watching the Super Bowl. Yeah. But there are far more eyeballs. I mean, Jamie Bambrick's video is probably I think on Twitter it's already doing better than the original He Gets Us ad did on Twitter. Oh, oh well. Okay. Um which which shows you like how do you get in front of eyeballs these days. And I think it's it's a particular kind of you know, it might be boomer thinking. Yeah. And like the cynical part of me thinks that like he gets us is is kind of like boomers giving a lot of money to some edgy millennials who are basically going after some zoomer nuns. Yeah, yeah. And all the while, the way that people are having conversations these days is you know YouTube and Twitter. So, did you see have you seen the Kanye West advert?
SPEAKER_06No. Let's let's do this. This is gonna blow your mind, right? So, so Kanye. What's going on with him right now? Um, so Kanye West made a Super Bowl ad, and you can watch the whole thing. He paid for 60 seconds. And this one. This is Kanye's this is his Super Bowl. He paid seven million or whatever it was for this long. This was his.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
unknownAnd this is my commercial.
SPEAKER_00And since we spent all the money on the commercial spot, we actually didn't spend any money on the actual commercial. But the idea is I want you to go to easy.com y dot ecom. And I'm gonna write it at the bottom of the screen, and I got the huge and mmm that's it.
SPEAKER_03Wow. So And let's see what the return on investment is for that. I mean, yeah? Humongous. Yeah. Humongous. And yeah. Yeah. And like if you do do some stats on, okay, so if the maybe they're halfway through their like billion dollars they're gonna spend on He Gets Us. Um I saw a stat just before um Super Bowl that said they had 600,000 sign-ups to the reading plans on on new version. 600,000 is great, but the the price per acqu acquisition is gonna be immense. Yeah, yeah. And if anyone is interested in digital evangelism and wants a greater return on investment, can I say go to speaklife.org.uk and get in touch with us because we can give you a stellar return if that's your return on investment. You got 600,000, you're spending a billion, or you're halfway through spending a billion. Yeah. We can get you a much better, you know, in in terms of the the amount that we pay, because we don't try and get Super Bowl and we we use like organic stuff like this, and we get people to do 3-2-1, and they and along they come. Wasn't this wasn't planning to be an ad for Speak Life, but if if if there are a if there is a billion dollars out there for evangelism, send it to Jamie Banbrick. Funnily enough, Jamie Banbrick in the comments, people are like, I'm you've got to start a crowdfunder, let's get this onto onto you know the next Super Bowl. And Jamie's like, I don't think that's how this works. Yeah. You know, why would you?
SPEAKER_06I don't think it is at all. I think you're right, maybe this is uh this is boomer thinking. The best Super Bowl ads are the ones made by the big corporations who are trying to sell you something, and there's a big kind of brand repositioning that's taking place.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um so But they say they're not trying to reposition reposition the brand of Jesus. Um they they say that explicitly on the website, and I'm like, you kind of are, right?
SPEAKER_06Well, I think that's a bit of doublespeak, isn't it? Because they're saying it's got associated with hate and oppression, this story of love. Yeah. How did that happen? Where were we?
SPEAKER_03Taking it back. Um I mean I think I think the other reason not to put Jam Jamie Banbrick's ad on Super Bowl is is because I think it will resonate a lot more with Christians than it will with non-Christians, you know. I I think. Um that would be.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Enthuse the Christians, make the Christians happy they're saved, make the Christians delighted to be Christians. Yes. It's festive joy to which you know others are invited. So here's a bunch of people really enjoying Jesus. Yeah, yeah. And come along. Come along, you're welcome. Everyone is welcome. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what you what your background has been, it doesn't matter what you're bringing to this. We're all like so happy. Yeah. Like it's very hard. What do they say? It's very hard to convert someone who's happier than you are, in terms of like show us the joy of salvation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06The joy of the Lord is my strength, and and this is what's being communicated. Right. And so often, like, this ad is so so minor key. It's so kind of now that clearly there's gonna be a place for that at some point. But the Dunking Donuts ad with Ben Affleck pulling in Matt Damon and um Brady to try to convince Jennifer Lopez to get it You know, yeah, that is a fun ad. Like, looks like people are enjoying Dunking Donuts.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. As opposed to the church scolding you, or maybe even Jesus scolding you for not not reaching across the aisle more. Um and that only widens the the cultural divides. Um I think Jamie Bambrick's ad, I think it resonates a lot with the people who are kind of done with winsomeness. You know, kind of kind of done with there was that winsomeness discourse. Don't you hate the phrase discourse? Winsomeness discourse. Discourse. Um but I'll use it because that's that's the sort of way people interact with one another on Twitter. But but the whole idea, so um James Wood wrote um a very thoughtful essay on Tim Keller and um and the ways in which Tim Keller has absolutely blessed him and blessed all of us, but have we bought into third wayism far too much? And we we claim to be above the fray, above left and right. Yeah. And I think there's a sense um among some people that when you say winsome, what you really mean is coddle left punch right. And you you turn your back on the conservatives and you go after the secular elites, and you kind of say, We're not like those people over there. We are we're the cool Christians who have rescued the love story of Jesus from the hands of the haters. Yeah. And now we're and and I I think they're responding to something that's real, that it that is there in the water. And I I would say two things I've learnt from James Wood and others. I think like what one thing is that um so-called progressives can be every bit as pharisaical as you know the conservative stereotype ever is. And you know, when you've when you've got sort of the prodigal son image in mind, um, I think we have inherited a vision of what you know the the liberal progressive is clearly the younger brother, right? Right. You know, just just out for freedom and off they go into the far country. And the Bible Belt kind of dude is clearly gonna be the pharisaic one. And whatever has changed um uh over the course of the last 30 years, one thing that has definitely changed is that um the progressive left can be even more pharisaical and authoritarian than your average right winger. You know, like a ma imagine the diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Harvard, right, telling people, no, don't wear that for Halloween.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Are they older brother or younger brother? Or just think about your your average guy in a red state who just wants to get the government off his back, right? And and and fears the deep state. And is he more older brother or younger brother? Like, and so the old paradigms of what is left and right and therefore who Jesus might actually you know have words against has changed.
SPEAKER_06So who so does that does that uh give credence to Aaron Rand's idea of uh we're now in negative world. Negative world. And so, okay, we're in negative world. Christianity has no cultural credit anymore, and therefore we need to make these He Gets Us ads in order to The Jamie Bambert kind or well, I mean that maybe the the the footwashing kind. Okay. Right? You're in negative world. Everyone everyone thinks Christianity is hateful and oppressive. Right. Therefore, you need to make these ads that show that uh he gets us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So yeah, that's why I don't like the Aaron Wren kind of characterization. I th I think he's noticing a lot of true things, but if we thought that it was positive up until 1994, and then it was neutral up until about 2012, and then it's been negative since then. Well, no, it's been negative like like since Jesus rose from the dead and and sent us into the world, and he said that they hated me, they're gonna hate you. So it's been but it's been different kinds of negative. Okay. And it's just worth figuring out. There's a different kind of negativity. Tim Keller faced a lot of negativity in Manhattan in 1989, and it was very negative for him in lots of different ways. And he did not experience positive world in 1989 in Manhattan. Um and in lots of ways, there are there are there are things that are more positive and things that you can sort of grab hold of in 2024 that are more positive than what he was facing in 1998. So it's it's just it's a lot more of a mixed picture. And if we just think, oh, in the olden days it used to be positive and now it's negative, I think, I think what is absolutely true is that it's a different kind of negativity nowadays. And one of the things that I would point to is, yeah, for instance, who who is the elder brother now? Sure, there there can be some religious hypocrites that are um elder brothers now, and that's really important to be sensitive to. But there can be a kind of a totalitance and there can be an authoritarian kind of progressivism as well, that is also quite quite parasitical. So it's a different kind of negativity, we need to be attuned to that. And I think the second thing that the this discourse about winsomeness has made me aware of is that like red states kind of conservative type people need the gospel too, and they need it to be contextualized for them too. And if you've got 40 million Americans, 30 million of which would actually come to church on a Sunday, um, like if you're if you're really into contextualization, like how do you contextualize for such a person? And is the He Gets Us campaign like probably attuned to that? Or are we only going to contextualize for Manhattanites?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And the point about those uh millions of people, tens of millions of people who just left church for mundane, boring reasons. Right. Like you know, the the the sports schedule changed, um then just inviting them to church might be a good thing to do. Now, I feel like maybe last year when we looked at the He Gets Us website, that they had the question, is it this a campaign to get me to church?
SPEAKER_03And so then the first word of the answer is no. No. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And and yet it kind of is. And and there are there are ways of funneling you through, and you can get in contact with someone who's quite local who will invite you to church.
SPEAKER_06And um so isn't that just isn't that bizarre that it's like we're gonna put the question, boom, is this a campaign to get me to church? Yeah. No. It's like that might be a good thing, you know, getting people to church. And why would we be so desperate to to not make people think we're trying to get you to go to church? Yes. What is so ugly about the concept of going to church that you feel that you need to back away from it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and if we keep on doing this kind of evangelism, which sort of kind of softly throws the church under the bus, then it's not surprising that you get dechurching in the first place. It's not surprising that you move house and in the waters in which you swim, you you start to feel less and less like church is important, and more and more like it's a me and Jesus thing. So as long as I've got a good podcast, you know, I I maintain my Christian walk anyway.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So, you know, maybe next year, let's spend some money on biggin up church. Maybe.
SPEAKER_06Big idea.
SPEAKER_03Anyway, that'll that'll do us for now. We'd like to know what you think about the He Guts Us ads, about Jamie Banbrick's ad, and about how we can reach out better for Jesus. But if you do want to find out more about this Jesus story, we've got a great course for you to do, 321course.com. Go there now, make an account for yourself, and you'll be in in just a few moments. And you can binge it in a couple of hours, or you can do it over eight sessions. We'd love you to meet Jesus through that and then share it with others because you don't need a Super Bowl ad in order to share Jesus. You can do it with the flick of a WhatsApp message. Nate Morganlock, thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much, Glenn. Well, there we go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. It's been really interesting to revisit the He Gets Us campaign. We discussed it a year ago, and it seems uh the adverts they did then went down better than the ones they did this year. But I'd just like to draw your attention to a video on our YouTube channel if you haven't seen it already. Glenn did a 15-minute monologue, a message for the He Gets Us campaign, in response to these 2024 Super Bowl commercials. And it's called Dear He Gets Us Two Critiques from an Evangelist and Well Wisher. But yes, you can find that on our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash speaklife media. Well, that's all from us today. Have a great week. God bless, and we will see you next time.