He Gets Us Returns to Super Bowl 2026: Can a Jesus Ad Cut Through the Noise?
Evangelical group He Gets Us is returning to the Super Bowl in 2026 for the fourth year in a row, once again bringing Jesus to the Big Game stage. This year’s 60-second spot, airing in the second half of Super Bowl LX, pitches Jesus as a source of relief from the deafening noise of modern life. The campaign behind the ad is run by a nonprofit evangelical organization called Come Near, whose mission is to “invite all people one step closer to the authentic Jesus from wherever they are”. With creative support from Los Angeles production house Prettybird and director Solomon Ligthelm (known for past work with HP and Ford) alongside Texas-based agency Lerma, the new ad aims to deliver a contemplative message in the midst of America’s loudest advertising showcase.
Faith-based advertising at the Super Bowl isn’t entirely new – past games have seen spots from the Church of Scientology, the Catholic prayer app Hallow, and even Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s anti-hate campaign. But He Gets Us stands out for its persistence and scale. The campaign launched in 2021, originally funded by a Christian donor group (the Servant Foundation led by Hobby Lobby CEO David Green) with the ambitious goal of sparking conversations about Jesus. “What better place to do that than the Super Bowl?” quips Simon Armour, Come Near’s chief creative officer. Indeed, Come Near acquired the He Gets Us initiative in 2024 and has since evolved its approach – shifting from broad messages about societal division to more personal, introspective themes.
From Polarization to Personalization: A New Message for 2026
A still from the new “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ad emphasizes its tagline, “There’s more to life than more,” highlighting the campaign’s pushback against rampant consumerism.
Over the past three Super Bowls, He Gets Us made waves with striking, if sometimes perplexing, vignettes reframing Jesus for a divided modern audience. The 2023 debut, titled “Love Your Enemies,” juxtaposed black-and-white photos of Americans angrily clashing with one another, all set to the plaintive tune of Rag’n’Bone Man’s “Human.” Its provocative kicker: “Jesus loved the people we hate,” splashed on screen as a challenge to viewers. In 2024, the campaign’s follow-up ad used surreal, staged tableaux of people literally washing each other’s feet – from a cowboy tending to a Native American elder, to a white pastor humbly washing the feet of a queer Black activist – underscoring the idea that “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.” The 2025 spot continued the “let’s all get along” theme, depicting Americans from different walks of life helping each other (notably, a man in a “John 3:16” cap embracing a Pride parade marcher) with the tagline “Jesus showed us what greatness was.” That ad even featured Johnny Cash’s cover of “Personal Jesus” to drive home the point.
Yet for all the cinematic earnestness of these ads – and more than $700 million spent since the campaign’s launch – America’s divides remained as stark as ever. If anything, the bold messaging drew as much controversy as praise. Some viewers were moved by the calls for compassion; others were confused or skeptical about the agenda. Come Near took note. Heading into 2026, Armour and his team opted to recalibrate. “After a period of time, people can see it coming… It doesn’t cut through as much,” Armour admits, describing the need to keep the message fresh. The new creative strategy, dubbed “Loaded Words,” shifts away from hot-button culture-war imagery and toward the inner struggles people face daily. In Armour’s words, the campaign “evolved more to this idea of Jesus gets you, all of you, in whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re facing, whatever you’re going through”.
The Super Bowl 2026 commercial is the centerpiece of this refocused approach. Titled “More,” the spot pointedly critiques our society’s endless pursuit of more – more possessions, more status, more stimulation. It opens with a little girl hoarding piles of dolls as a sing-song voiceover chirps, “The one who dies with the most toys wins!”. What follows is a rapid-fire montage of modern excess and anxiety: smartphones endlessly scrolling, neon casino lights, cosmetic surgery, snarled traffic, bodybuilders chasing perfection – a barrage of too much everything. The word “MORE” flashes repeatedly in dizzying fonts, as if to mirror the cacophony of constant pressure. Midway through, a vintage-sounding voice cut in: “You’ve got to learn to get more pleasure out of this,” it admonishes, stuttering like a broken record. But just as the sensory overload reaches a peak, the chaos cuts to calm. We see a lone hiker standing silent in a vast, quiet landscape under an open sky. Text appears: “There’s more to life than more.” A final question lingers on-screen: “What if Jesus shows us how to find it?”. In that moment, the ad pivots from critique to invitation, directing viewers to HeGetsUs.com for answers.
The tonal shift is striking – and very much intentional. Armour explains that in its fourth Super Bowl appearance, He Gets Us is “getting personal,” honing in on the “absurdity of where things are at” in people’s everyday lives. Instead of depicting Jesus as a mediator in our political feuds, the campaign now portrays him as a gentle antidote to burnout and meaninglessness. The “Loaded Words” series that launched in late 2025 features related ads like “Don’t” and “Do,” which explore the pressure of constant warnings and the expectation to achieve it all. These spots were developed using a “neighbor-led” approach – essentially focus groups and research that asked Americans what they struggle with spiritually day-to-day. The recurring theme, Armour found, was overwhelming pressure: to always be busy, to accumulate more stuff, to gain approval and recognition, all in hopes of finding purpose. “What we kept hearing was that [this] was failing them – their life is not turning out how they wanted… the noise is constant, with digital media, social media, our phones,” Armour says, describing the insight that shaped the new campaign. In response, the 2026 Super Bowl ad offers a kind of visual palate cleanser – filmed on grainy 35mm film for a more human, cinematic feel – and a spiritual prompt to reconsider our priorities. It’s aimed at everyone, but especially at a younger generation coming of age in chaos. (Come Near notes that Gen Z, struggling with economic uncertainty and disillusioned by broken promises, is a key target for this message of hope beyond material success.)
The Power Behind the Campaign – And the Questions It Raises
It’s not just the message that makes He Gets Us noteworthy – it’s the sheer scale and polish of the operation. This is not your local church’s humble outreach. The campaign is backed by serious money and marketing savvy. Internal projections indicated spending roughly $1 billion on He Gets Us across its first few years. So far, upwards of $430 million flowed into it from 2021–2024 via the Servant Foundation (also known as The Signatry, a Christian donor fund). And after Come Near took the reins in 2024, the spending hasn’t slowed – in filings, the group anticipated another $345 million for 2024–2026 to keep Jesus on people’s screens. To put that in perspective, that’s Super Bowl-level ad budgets every year for several years running. It dwarfs what many commercial brands spend to stay in the conversation.
Those deep pockets have bought top-tier creative talent. The 2026 ad was produced with Prettybird, the same production company behind flashy campaigns for major tech and auto brands. Director Solomon Ligthelm, known for his evocative visuals, brought a cinematic flair to the work (even opting to shoot on film stock to add warmth and texture). And agency Lerma – an independent Dallas shop with mainstream clients – helped craft the strategy and story. In short, He Gets Us is leveraging Madison Avenue expertise to sell something decidedly non-commercial: faith. The result is a level of craft and narrative storytelling rarely seen in religious advertising. Each Super Bowl spot has been artful and thought-provoking, clearly intended to compete with the Budweisers and Googles for viewers’ attention rather than feel like a stodgy public service announcement.
Yet the very slickness and ambition of He Gets Us have prompted many to ask: What’s really going on here? Skeptics across the spectrum have not been shy. On one hand, progressive critics see a kind of holy Trojan horse – a cuddly, inclusive veneer masking an agenda tied to conservative evangelical politics. They point out that He Gets Us’ parent fund has channeled tens of millions to causes and groups fighting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom. In fact, the campaign’s own site discloses it’s a subsidiary of Servant Foundation (a.k.a. The Signatry), whose major donors include figures like Hobby Lobby’s David Green. For many younger or more secular viewers, that backstory rings alarm bells. After the 2023 Super Bowl ads, U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez memorably blasted He Gets Us on social media, tweeting that “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign”. Her sharp critique encapsulated a common reaction: Why pour astronomical sums into feel-good commercials when that money could directly help the poor or marginalized – causes Jesus himself prioritized? Moreover, some argue, if the donors behind the campaign support divisive political fights in the shadows, the ads’ calls for love and tolerance might come off as disingenuous. A pastor quoted by CNN put it bluntly: “Jesus doesn’t have an image problem, but Christians and their churches do… These campaigns end up being PR for the wrong problem”. In other words, maybe it’s not Jesus who needs rebranding via marketing blitzes – it’s his modern followers, and that requires actions, not TV spots.
At the same time, He Gets Us has faced backlash from the other flank – within the evangelical world. A number of conservative Christians have bristled at the campaign’s soft-sell approach to the faith, complaining that it waters down or warps Jesus’s message. The fact that the Super Bowl ads studiously avoid hot-button moral issues or explicit calls to repentance has led some to deem them “too woke.” Prominent right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk lambasted the 2024 foot-washing ad as “one of the worst services to Christianity in the modern era,” accusing its creators of portraying a Jesus who “tolerated sinners” and lacked righteous judgment. In Kirk’s view (shared by some pastors and pundits), the campaign was spending big bucks to preach a feel-good Christ who asks nothing of us – a far cry from the more fire-and-brimstone Jesus they prefer. The Green family (Hobby Lobby’s founders who helped bankroll He Gets Us) were “taken for a ride by these woke tricksters,” Kirk fumed. While his harsh words might be extreme, they underscore the rift: He Gets Us has tried to transcend politics, only to get caught in the crossfire of America’s culture wars. Being apolitical turns out to be its own political stance these days.
A Bold Experiment in Faith-Based Marketing
So, does the He Gets Us Super Bowl gambit actually work? The answer likely depends on what “working” means. By raw numbers, the campaign has achieved staggering reach. Since its inception, He Gets Us videos have amassed nearly 10 billion views across media channels, and the website has drawn tens of millions of visitors curious enough to learn more. Each Super Bowl spot reliably becomes a talking point on Monday – no small feat when competing with beer commercials and celebrity cameos. From a branding perspective, the simple black-and-white “He ⸺ Gets ⸺ Us” logo and the empathetic slogan “He gets us. All of us.” have gained a level of recognition that many churches or ministries could only dream of. In an age when organized religion often struggles to get a hearing, a campaign making Jesus a topic of mainstream water-cooler conversation is itself remarkable.
The true goal of Come Near and its anonymous donors, however, isn’t just eyeballs – it’s souls. They aren’t spending all this money merely for awareness; they want to change hearts, to gently invite burnt-out, skeptical people to consider Jesus anew. On that front, the jury is still out. It’s hard to measure how many viewers of a Super Bowl ad about loving your enemies actually went out and loved an enemy – or how many people grappling with overconsumption will see the new “More” commercial and decide to crack open a Bible or visit a church. What’s clear is that He Gets Us has stirred both interest and ire. It’s gotten supportive messages from those grateful to see a version of Christianity centered on love and understanding. It’s also drawn sharp criticism from those who see a marketing ploy, or even hypocrisy, beneath the glossy exterior.
The 2026 ad encapsulates this tension. On one hand, it’s a beautifully produced, thought-provoking piece that taps into a real cultural weariness. Who hasn’t felt exhausted by the constant “more, more, more” of consumer culture? The spot’s critique of our frenzied lives is likely to resonate with faith-driven and secular audiences alike – at least until the Jesus twist lands. That reveal, “What if Jesus shows us how to find [what’s more]?”, is where viewers will diverge. Some will find it intriguing or comforting, others perhaps intrusive or preachy. The campaign’s hope is that a few might be intrigued enough to explore further, beyond the 60-second ad, and perhaps find a deeper connection to the “authentic Jesus” that Come Near champions. In an interview, board member Nicole Martin emphasized that the ads “aren’t aimed at people who already believe… This is for people who just need to believe in something – and Jesus is the way to reach them.”. It’s a sentiment that highlights the fine line He Gets Us walks: trying to be inviting without alienating, to be culturally relevant without losing the religious core.
Whether this latest Super Bowl foray will succeed in bringing people “one step closer” to faith – or whether it will simply spark another round of debates – remains to be seen. He Gets Us is a grand experiment, blending modern advertising savvy with age-old evangelism. It has certainly gotten America talking about Jesus at the Super Bowl, a venue more associated with beer and halftime shows than beatitudes. In that sense, the campaign has cut through the noise – ironically, by directly addressing how noisy our lives have become. But as the dust settles after the big game, the larger question lingers: will a multimillion-dollar commercial about Jesus truly help people find what’s missing in their lives, or is it merely a well-intentioned spectacle?
In a culture saturated with marketing, even the “good news” has to fight to be heard. He Gets Us is betting that a message of empathy and hope, delivered with Super Bowl production values, can break through cynicism. It’s a bold, creative, and controversial bet – one that will no doubt continue to spark conversation long after the final whistle. And perhaps that, in itself, is a small victory for a campaign trying to remind the world that Jesus, too, “gets” our modern struggles. Whether viewers ultimately embrace or reject the invitation, for one night during Super Bowl 2026 the noise will pause – if only for a minute – to consider a different kind of “More.”
