The Secret Sauce of a Thriving Church

In 1967, the American public was introduced to a new culinary delicacy—the Big Mac. You might remember the jingle, “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.” The Big Mac was invented by a Pittsburgh franchise owner named Jim Delligatti to improve the disappointing sales numbers in his location. It worked! Sales took off, and so did the recipe for the Big Mac. Across the United States, the new burger, which originally sold for 45 cents, was a huge success due in large part to its special sauce. For years, McDonald’s guarded the exact ingredients of their special sauce to make sure that if you craved the taste of a Big Mac you had to come to their restaurants to get it. Their special sauce was the secret sauce.

A Big Mac may or may not be your thing, but there is a secret sauce you need to try.

The Secret Sauce to a Thriving Church

There is a secret sauce to a thriving church. It is not a secret that in order to be healthy, a church must faithfully preach God’s word with clarity and power. It is also not a secret that in order to be healthy, a church must faithfully administer the ordinances in such a way that it points to the work of Christ. It is also not a secret that in order to be healthy, a church must faithfully shepherd God’s people, which sometimes requires the practice of church discipline. Since the time of the Reformation, these have been the marks of a faithful church. For instance, this is how the Belgic Confession (1561) describes a true church:

“The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks: The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults.”

Thus, it is no secret that these are the things that a faithful church does. However, what we sometimes forget is that the healthiest churches not only do these things, they do them together. The church is not merely a group of individuals seeking and serving Christ on their own; it is the body of Christ living out their spiritual life together. In this way, body life is the secret sauce to a healthy church.

What is Body Life?

The church is the body of Christ, and when the body worships and serves the Lord together, you experience the grace of body life. You could describe the body life of the church in a number of helpful ways:

• Body life = faithfully living together as the body of Christ and purposely practicing the “one anothers” of the NT.

• Body life = the oneness of joy experienced by believers who are growing in the Lord together and serving him together.

• Body life = the spiritual fellowship of a church that leads to serving with one another and serving for one another.

• Body life = each member of the church using their spiritual gift to make and mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

• Body life = the shared spiritual life that takes place in a church when believers sit under the ministry of the word together, submit to shepherding together, and pursue discipleship together.

Some might read these descriptions and ask, “Isn’t this just church fellowship?” Yes, it is. The New Testament often speaks of the church’s shared ministry by using the language of fellowship. So if the term body life throws you off, you can insert the word “fellowship” every time I say “body life,” and it won’t bother me at all. However, just so that you will know where I am coming from, I started using the term body life more frequently because I have noticed some misconceptions about the meaning of the word fellowship. When we speak about fellowship, it usually involves food, family, and fun. These three blessings can be a sweet part of our fellowship, but they don’t totally capture the essence of what the life of the body of Christ should be about. When the Bible speaks about fellowship, it is spiritual in nature, rooted in the grace of the Gospel, and tied to our shared commitments about the truth. That is not always what we mean when we talk about fellowship. This is why I like to talk about body life; it helps Christians consider the need to think of their life as part of a body rather than independent of the body.

Example of Body Life

To be clear, you cannot artificially manufacture Christian fellowship and discipleship through scheduling strategies and programatic initiatives. Whenever ministries try this approach it inevitably fails. In contrast, true body life is a grace from God that is the result of a church doing what God says. Faithful ministries will produce faithful body life—people growing in the Lord and serving the Lord together. When the word goes forth from the pulpit with power, the ordinances are practiced with biblical care, and the church is led with godly oversight, the result will be the joy and mutual edification of body life.

We get several glimpses of this kind of healthy body life in the NT:

Acts 4:32–33 (ESV): Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

2 Cor 8:5: and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

Ephesians 4:11-16:“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

In each of these examples, you see a group of regenerate people whose lives have been transformed by the truth in such a way that they are joyfully growing and serving in unity with one another—that’s body life.

Conclusion:

A robust ministry requires the preaching of God’s word, the practice of the ordinances, and the pastoring of God’s people. But these things have to be done with and for one another, which is why body life is like the special sauce on a Big Mac! It may not be one of the main ingredients in the church, but it brings all the other ingredients together so that the final product is better.

Body life is a vital ingredient in the ministry of the church. When we gather together as the church, we do so for the purpose of worshiping God, but we also do so for the encouragement of the body (cf., Heb 10:24-25). The body life of the church is a sweet grace that is sustained by love and leads to holiness (1 Thess 3:11-13).

“Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” (1 Thessalonians 3:11–13, ESV)