Denali Sager – Loveland, Colorado … Walter Rogers, pastor and chaplain at Campion Academy (CA) in Loveland, Colorado, presented “Evidence for God,” a series of short messages focused on giving students solid answers to many common questions or doubts, September 7-11.

Week in Spiritual Emphasis (WISE) kicked off on Monday with the story of Rogers’ formative years, and how the choices he and his brother made led to the brothers having starkly different opinions of God.

Julia P., junior student, said, “My favorite part of WISE so far is how Pastor Walter includes the students in his illustrations. He calls people up and plays Uno and makes pancakes. My favorite sermon was Tuesday’s because it made a lot of sense.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Rogers spoke on the topic of “random chance.” Beginning the talk with a deck of “Uno” cards, Rogers illustrated the possibility but high improbability of all eight “Wild” cards being drawn in a row and compared those statistics to the improbability of perfectly matching the genome of the simplest bacteria. Another favorite illustration came when Rogers created “random chance pancakes” with a given correct probability of 1/45. Students drew papers with ingredients and measurements randomly.

On Thursday, students learned the evidence for Jesus and His miracles being true and factual versus being a legend, lie, or fairytale. Rogers compared the stories of Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) and Jesus to give students a sense of scale when comparing timelines, witnesses, and historical accuracy.

Danilo de A., senior student, said, “One thing that stuck out to me was the backstory of Santa Claus. It was interesting to hear the true story and to learn how the story changed. It was very different from what I thought. It showed how little the Bible changed in comparison.”

Friday morning, Rogers taught how the book of Daniel was proven as a prophetic book by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Additionally, he spoke about other prophetic timelines and several of the many prophecies foretelling Jesus’ birth, life, and death.

This year, Week of Worship was renamed Week in Spiritual Emphasis (WISE) to be more encompassing of the programming.

Rogers said, “My goal for WISE week was to provide an intellectual foundation for the students to build their faith. I wish to foster an environment focused on students’ retention of faith through high school and beyond. I don’t want students to be sucked into faith just because it sounds good emotionally. I want them to have a strong, defendable basis of faith.”

—Denali Sager, Campion Academy Student News Team. Photos by Josh Profir.