If you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’re looking for free He Gets Us gear. Let’s just rip the Band-Aid off: We’ve “sold” out of our free gear, and our “Give Love, Get Gear” program is paused as we work to enhance it. Before you leave, though, there are two things you should know. The first is that giving away gear in exchange for kindness was a huge success, and we’re committed to building out other programming like it that gives our fans opportunities to spread love and kindness the way that Jesus would have. And the second is that the stories and stats that came out of this are absolutely mind-boggling — and we’d like to share some of those with you.
This all started because we were fascinated by how Jesus treated money. What caught our attention was the way Jesus talked about and treated money in the real world. There are a couple of eye-opening stories in this category, but we’ll focus on just one for now. Jesus and his disciples were outside the temple in Jerusalem when they saw some people donating money. First, they saw a group of rich men who gave a large amount of money and made a big deal of it. The second was a poor widow who gave two small copper coins. Jesus pointed out the widow and praised her generosity because even though her donation was small, she still gave it despite having little money to her name. Jesus’ economy was backward. It wasn’t about profit margins or cash flows. It was about intentions. It was an economy of kindness, not money.
So we set out to create something that would mirror Jesus’ economy in real life, and the “Give Love, Get Gear” program was born. Our idea was pretty simple: We’d cover the cost of the gear (t-shirts, hats, water bottles, stickers), and in return, people would commit to “paying” for it with an act of kindness. What came next blew us away. Over 145,000 people decided to pay into the economy of kindness with commitments to pay someone a compliment, comfort someone who is hurting, care for a neighbor, or love an enemy — just to name a few. One hundred forty-five thousand. That number is just mind-boggling. Of those 145,000, 30,000 people committed to forgiving someone — which might be the hardest thing on the list — and plenty followed up by sharing their stories of forgiveness and kindness, nearly all of which were incredible testaments to the power of living life for others as Jesus did.
One last note that sums up this whole journey really well: There’s one piece of gear we “sold” more than any other during the run of the program. It’s a t-shirt that simply says, “Hate is loud. Jesus loved louder.” One hundred forty-five thousand people going around loving their neighbors and investing in kindness seems to us to be a perfect example of loud love, so thank you for repping the movement and caring for the people around you.
