Niebuhr compared it to Noah’s ark: “Despite the storm without and the smell within, [the church] points to a truth beyond its own stating of it.”19 For all their dysfunction (“the smell within”), churches are a spiritual refuge amid the tumult of a broken world. In this refuge, we learn to be receptive to the grace that both heals us and strengthens us; but once we’ve been strengthened, we must go back into the fray.
