Ken Calwell enjoyed a long, successful career as an executive with Domino’s Pizza, Wendy’s, Papa Murphy’s and Pizza Hut, where in 1995 he led the national launch of a phenomenally popular item: the stuffed crust pizza.

By 2016, he wanted to do something different, something more integrated with his Christian faith, which grew deeper after an earlier near-fatal accident in which a car going 50 mph plowed into his bike as he trained for a race.

“It’s a seed that God planted back then, that I would serve him in new and different ways,” he said in a recent interview. “I felt like there was more I was being called to do.”

That led him to Colorado Springs and to Compassion International, where in 2017 he began serving as senior vice president of innovation and later moved to senior vice president and chief marketing officer, roles that helped the $1 billion-plus international children’s ministry grow its revenue.

He was at work one day in April 2021 when he received an intriguing call.

A wealthy Christian donor felt too many spiritually hungry people were looking for God in all the wrong places because nobody was telling them about Jesus. People associated Christianity with hate, not with Christ’s love, and he wanted to do something to reach these seekers.

Could Calwell use his marketing background to help the donor achieve his evangelistic mission?

‘He gets us’ ads debut

Calwell began consulting on the project, which made its first major splash with a commercial aired during the 2023 Super Bowl. It was a stunning black-and-white ad featuring short takes of people arguing and disagreeing.

The spot closed with two lines: “Jesus loved the people we hate” and “He gets us.”

By 2023, Calwell left Compassion and went full time with the “He gets us” effort, then operated by a nonprofit called Servant Foundation. In 2024, he helped start a new nonprofit that now manages the “He gets us” ads, billboards, websites and other projects to be announced later this year.

The nonprofit is called Come Near, a name inspired by a passage in the New Testament epistle of James: “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”

The goal is “to invite all people to move one step closer to the authentic Jesus, wherever they are.”

A Wall Street Journal story traced Calwell’s career arc: “How a Former Top Pizza Marketer Is Now Promoting Jesus.”

Come Near is a 20-employee nonprofit. It has no physical office and doesn’t reveal its budget, but Super Bowl ads aren’t cheap to create and air. Calwell and four other employees live in the Springs and Denver, and the group held its June board meeting in the Springs.

Disruptive marketing

Pizza Hut invested millions in researching the potential market for its stuffed crust pizza. Then the new pies were test-marketed in five cities, then in 10 cities. When it was finally time for the national rollout in 1995, Calwell wanted a “disruptive” marketing campaign that would cut through the media clutter.

The answer was an ad campaign that showed diners disagreeing over how to eat a slice: Do you grab the crust and eat the pointy end first, or do you consume the crust first?

The most famous ad featured Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana, at a time when their bitter divorce proceedings were front page news. The ad showed the couple arguing over how to eat pizza. It earned extensive media coverage, jump-starting a menu item that would soon generate billions in annual sales.

Come Near has been following the same formula in its efforts to create a “disruptive” marketing campaign that will generate millions of feelings, questions and discussions about Jesus and what he means.

The organization researched data, conducted a national study with 5,000 respondents, and organized 30 focus groups in six cities, including Denver, to find out more about what people feel emotionally, relationally and spiritually. It tallied everything and made a list identifying people’s top five unmet needs:

• Staying positive amid challenges.

• Being their best self.

• Personal well-being.

• Mental health.

• Overcoming anxiety.

Then it test-marketed sample messages, all of them designed to show people something they may not know about Jesus — not to hammer viewers over the head, but to intrigue them and spark their curiosity and spiritual hunger.

The 2025 Super Bowl ads explored the theme, “What is greatness.”

Pre-evangelism draws seekers, critics

The best-known Christian evangelist was the late Billy Graham, who held stadium crusades in which listeners were invited to come forward and give their lives to Christ.

The Come Near campaigns have been called pre-evangelism, because they seek to start a discussion about Jesus by disrupting people’s negative notions about Jesus, not necessarily closing the deal with a conversion experience.

Success is seen not in pizzas sold, but in web searches for Jesus and other Christian terms, and visits to the “He gets us” website, where people can find more information, see more videos, access Bibles and study materials, and learn about partner ministries, including Alpha, an evangelism program in churches.

Tyler Johnson, a former pastor who’s Come Near’s chief impact officer, says the ads and billboards embody a “pedagogy of love” that seeks to be transformational, not transactional.

“What we’re trying to seed into the world is that love is the greatest thing in the world, and God is love.”

The phrase “He gets us” is shorthand for “Jesus sees us, Jesus knows us and Jesus loves us regardless.”

The ads have generated many testimonies from people who said they sparked a new spiritual quest or renewal.

They’ve also generated intense criticism from some fellow believers who complain the ads don’t provide enough of the biblical message, or that all the millions spent on ads should go to feeding the poor or other good works.

A ministry called Gospel Coalition says the ads present a Jesus who “is more a compassionate friend than a Lord” and “an impressionistic Jesus who can be consumed quickly and conveniently.”

Calwell says Come Near will stay focused on its mission while working to form partnerships with churches and ministries that can help people take additional steps on their spiritual journey.