Saints, we should be concerned with evangelism, but we should also be concerned with doing evangelism biblically. The He Gets Us Campaign does not practice biblical evangelism, and it does not present the biblical Jesus. We in the PCA should be seriously concerned that our leadership is even considering cooperating with such a Campaign, much less promoting and defending it to our Churches.

I don’t get the “He Gets Us” Campaign. If you aren’t familiar with this organization, be prepared to hear denominational leaders promote it in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
The campaign has a noble goal to “reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible.” Based on recent surveys like Ligonier’s on The State of Theology, it is clear that those outside and inside the church need a reintroduction to the Jesus of the Bible. There is growing confusion on a range of topics from the inspiration of Scripture to misunderstandings on gender and sexuality. The campaign organizers should be applauded for their passion to reintroduce people to Jesus. Sadly, I am not so sure that the Jesus they want to introduce is the one found in the Bible. There are a number of red flags on the campaign’s website.
About the Campaign
Let’s start in the “About Us” section. If you were hoping to find out who is behind this campaign, you would be disappointed. All we are told is that “a diverse group of people passionate about the authentic Jesus of the Bible” (emphasis mine) started the campaign. At the very bottom of this section, it says that the “He Gets Us” campaign is an initiative of the Servant Foundation. If you Google “Servant Foundation” you will find this: https://servantokc.org/the-servant-foundation It is an endowment fund controlled by the Church of the Servant’s Foundation Board and the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation. The Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation is dedicated to “empowering you to invest your resources to do long-lasting good in the world. From writing wills and estate plans to caring for single mothers and orphans, we empower you to commit your resources to do good that echoes for generations.” This is confusing. Is the whole initiative an outworking of one Church? Is it funded by the Methodists? If the latter, then which ones, since they are currently splitting? Finally, the Church of the Servant doesn’t tell you much about their beliefs. The Church’s “Our Beliefs” section tells us only that they love Jesus and that he died as a “demonstration of God’s redeeming love.” There is no statement on why Christ’s death (i.e., the Atonement) was necessary. Jesus’ death did “demonstrate God’s redeeming love,” but Scripture repeatedly says he died for my sins, which is not mentioned in the statement of belief on the Church’s website. Such clarity is likewise absent from the “He Gets Us” campaign site.
[PCA Polity] Editor’s Note: after initial publication of this article, a reader noted the following. “HeGetsUs lists “Servant Foundation,” not “The Servant Foundation.” This matches “The Signatry” which does business as “Servant Foundation.” “The Signatry” is involved in all sorts of broadly “Christian” work and functionally anonymizes where the money is coming from – basically a dead end for anyone wondering who is funding the campaign and what their theological convictions may be.” Of course, the ambiguity of the founding and accountability structures in place for the Campaign does nothing to address the concern of the author (or editor) of this piece.
One more thing worth sharing from the “About Us” section is that it says, “We’re also not affiliated with any particular church or denomination. We simply want everyone to understand the authentic (emphasis mine; there’s that adjective again) Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible – the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.” This is confusing based on what I said above about this being an initiative of “The Servant Church.” It is also confusing with regards to why they keep referring to an “authentic Jesus.”  Who is He?
According to the “About Us” section, the “authentic Jesus” is characterized by the following values: “radical forgiveness,” “compassion,” “love,” “radical compassion,” and he “stood up for the marginalized.” His sacrificial death, teaching about hell, and emphasis on holiness are apparently not important enough aspects of the “authentic Jesus” to be worth mentioning. Finally, the emphasis of the Campaign is on Jesus’ humanity, “Ultimately, we want people to know his teachings and how he lived while here on Earth. And this will be a starting point to understanding him and his message.” Though they say they affirm Jesus’ full humanity and divinity, they again stress this is not all too important because “We’re simply inviting you to explore with us at He Gets Us how might things be different if more people followed his example.” So what kind of things does He Gets Us want the world to know about the “authentic” Jesus?
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God wants us to look to Him, hear from Him, and trust Him for all things, big things, continual things. In fact, every single moment and circumstance of our life is a call to faith. What you are facing right now—whatever it is—is about faith. God is trying to teach you to trust Him and use this moment to show you and those around you His reality. 

I recently saw a miracle. It came from God, of course, but it was activated by the faith of a godly leader. He felt led to believe God for something impossible and invited many of us to join Him in a massive faith step. Honestly, I thought there was no way. My faith was timid. The time came when the provision was needed, and it was not there in the time and way we anticipated.
But then, true to God’s ways, in perfect timing, God has provided and continues to provide far beyond what we could ever “ask or think.” There is absolutely no explanation for how and when this happened, but God. It’s a genuine, bonafide miracle.
The Reliability of Trusting God
A man had a son who was tortured by a demon who was hurting his son physically. “He often falls into the fire and often into the water. I brought him to your disciples, and they could not cure him,” the man said in desperation (Matthew 17:14).
Jesus called the boy to Himself, rebuked the demon and “he was cured at once.” And then, Jesus took the moment to give us all a lesson on the viability of faith.
Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible to you.”(Matthew 17:19-20)
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Written by Zoe S. Erler |
Friday, May 5, 2023
Cameron’s ties to Ridge Haven were always a given, having been enlisted as a high schooler to help with everything from food service to housekeeping, starting the summer of 2009 when his dad Wallace was hired as executive director. What wasn’t a given was his love for the camp, which has grown from serving about 400 kids a summer in 2009 to a two-location operation serving more than 13,000 campers year-round today.

For a self-proclaimed introvert, Cameron Anderson might have the most extroverted job on the planet. As the newly-installed executive director of Ridge Haven Camp, Conference and Retreat Center, he spends nearly 100% of his waking hours with people, whether it’s checking with camp staff, visiting a construction project, sitting down to lunch with campers in the dining hall, or playing with his two daughters.
Cameron’s ties to Ridge Haven were always a given, having been enlisted as a high schooler to help with everything from food service to housekeeping, starting the summer of 2009 when his dad Wallace was hired as executive director. What wasn’t a given was his love for the camp, which has grown from serving about 400 kids a summer in 2009 to a two-location operation serving more than 13,000 campers year-round today.
“I knew he was the best person for the job [when I saw how] he mentored the staff, summer staff, high school students … he just wants these kids to have a life of ministry, whether lay or not,” says Wallace.
A No Brainer
In 2019, Wallace, a hemophiliac, had a health scare and told the board of Ridge Haven that it was time to begin the search process to identify his replacement. The board began interviewing candidates.
Meanwhile, Cameron, who had graduated from Erskine Theological Seminary and was freshly ordained as a teaching elder in the PCA, moved from Georgia back to North Carolina with his wife Jeanna to come on staff as the camp’s ministry director. Wallace and others noticed that in addition to tending to operations, bookkeeping, and general finance, Cameron was intentional about cultivating the spiritual lives of other staff members and the summer college counselors.
“Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a mentor,” Wallace half jokes about himself. “I was once told when I was in seminary, the best thing you can do is be a church planter, go in and plant a church for three years, and then leave.”
Cameron, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the areas in which his father had struggled.
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