Service and Sacrifice

Monday, March 23, 2026

Salena Zito, yesterday, on HotAir, “It points to an even larger problem, not just on Capitol Hill but among reporters and civilians. Our relationship and understanding of our military, and military families, is broken.”  What lies at the heart of that break?  Zito contends it is that so few serve anymore.  But I think there is a deeper reason.

Yesterday I received most distressing news.  In my adult life I have watched two churches of my intimate acquaintance die.  Yesterday came news that a third had just stuck one foot solidly in the grave.  All three are in California.  It’s not that churches are not dying elsewhere, but the decline seems more precipitous in California than in other places I am familiar with.  These were not young institutions either – two of the three churches had 100+ year histories.  Just another reason I left that state.

I also learned yesterday that there are what amount to church hospice consultants.  Of course, their titles and companies are wrapped up in euphemistic language and puffery, but their essential role is to help churches die – “managed decline” – whatever you want to call it.  Such a notion rips me in half between deep sadness and overwhelming anger.  Such simply seems wholly inappropriate of an institution charged, by God Himself to go and make disciples of all nations.  Such an institution should not manage its decline; it should find a way to return to its mission.

If there is a common denominator in all three of those church failures, it is the loss of an ethos of sacrifice and service.  They all became congregations where people sought what they wanted rather than congregations where people came to give and to serve.  The church came to be viewed as a consumable – entertainment really.  And when the entertainment value was gone, well….

Which is where this ties into what we opened with – the broken bond between our military and the people of this nation.  The military is all about sacrifice and service – something no longer valued by this nation.  One must wonder if the nation will suffer the same sort of decline I have so distressingly witnessed in the church?

The parallels are striking, Our news media now serves as entertainment, not informant.  I wonder if John F. Kennedy’s greatest words are remembered?  “And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.“

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the necessity of facing our failings, spring boarding off some recent failures in so-called “elite” educational institutions.  In that post I wrote of my own sojourn to just such an elite educational institution and my departure from it.  I said, “In these events I learned that the quality of education a student receives has far more to do with the student than the institution providing the education.”  Whether it be church or nation or school, it is not about what we get, but what we put in.

We are winning this war. but are we saving the nation?  Can we?