One step you can't fail

He Gets Us launched in 2022 with a budget to make Jesus "the biggest brand in your city." Ten billion video views later, Christianity Today asked the executive who now runs it whether it's still the billion-dollar campaign early reporting described. He wouldn't say.

The deflection is the story, and not because the budget is embarrassing. A number is only embarrassing next to a result. You go quiet about cost when you can't name the return — and He Gets Us can't, because it has defined its return as something that cannot fail.

Ask what success is and the answer is one step closer to the authentic Jesus, from wherever people are. Ask what failure is and the answer is not being able to "measure people moving one step closer." But everything counts as a step. A watch-party conversation is a step. A click is a step — "it feels like there's an interest in taking one step." Ten billion views is ten billion steps. A metric every outcome satisfies isn't a metric; it's a mood. And a campaign that cannot describe failure cannot be over budget, because there is no denominator to divide the money into.

Look at what they actually measure and move. The campaign surveys 20,000 Americans a year and reports a "statistically significant lift" among the spiritually curious who are "aware of the He Gets Us brand" in saying Jesus is "relevant to their modern life." That is a brand-awareness study reporting a brand-favorability result — the exact thing a billion advertising dollars reliably buys. It is also not conversion, not repentance, not a body. He Gets Us says plainly it is "not a back to church campaign." The one outcome they can move is the one outcome advertising was built to move.

A metric every outcome satisfies isn't a metric; it's a mood.

The honest defense is biblical: you sow the seed, and the harvest isn't yours to count. Awareness is a real precondition — people have to hear before they can respond, and sneering at the reach is cheap. Grant all of it. The interviewer grants it too, then asks the only question that matters: a year later, is the person who sent you a lovely email actually in a church? The answer is that they can't say. But the parable being invoked has soil and fruit in it, not just a thrown handful. A sower who never walks back to the field to see what grew isn't trusting the harvest to God. He's counting throws and calling the count a harvest.

"The biggest brand in your city" was never a metaphor that got away from them. It was the honest version of the plan. What a billion dollars buys is a brand. The reason to stop saying the number out loud is that everyone can already see what it bought.