A fruitful gathering of people requires some common purpose and an ordering of the gathering towards the accomplishment of that purpose.  Chaos or anarchy, despite the modern and post-modern insistence to the contrary, cannot produce purposeful fruit, as even the smallest of gatherings requires some mutual agreements, understandings, and cooperation.  As the size of the gathering grows, the necessary systems of governing develop into more and more formal means until they arrive at the laws and constitutions of nations.  This paradigm necessitates viewing the gathering not just as a physical and static collection of individual people, but as the dynamic ongoing relational life of a group of people functioning as a whole in some way.  For proper functioning of such a gathered society, right ordering is needed and this requires some externally imposed order rather than just internal standards.  For any group of created humans regardless of number, the order which governs their contributions and participation towards a fulfilling and satisfying purpose arises from the design of their Creator.

               Throughout human history, gatherings of people come in all shapes and sizes but share common features.  Whether 2 or 3 gather for coffee, 10 gather for a work project, 300 gather for a church service, 1 million gather into a city, or 300 million gather for a nation, some force of submitted order is needed to adequately govern their actions and interactions.  Each of these countless varieties of gatherings necessitate some purpose even if only aimed at the simple pleasures of life. A gathering without a purpose becomes a coincidental accumulation of disconnected individuals who happen to be physically co-present.  A gathering with a purpose, whatever that purpose may be, has the opportunity to effect that which the un-gathered or purposeless groups cannot do.  In acting upon such an opportunity of purpose fulfillment, something more must be added.

               Mutually agreed upon constraints must direct the collective effort towards the purpose.  Each individual submits to these constraints as those governed by a drive to fulfill a purpose.  In a family, governing constraints prevent certain behaviors that harm other family members as that would diminish the unity of the gathered family which is an accepted goal of a family.  In a work setting, governing restraints prevent different employees from hindering the well-being or productive functioning of others.  In a city, governing restraints prevent theft, libel, fraud, and many other destructive practices.  Without the individuals in any given group submitting mutually to such constraints, little stands in the way of chaos and its fruitless efforts.

               These constraints upon a gathering can be limited or extensive depending on the size of the group and its purposes.  Small gatherings and simple purposes require fewer constraints.  Larger gatherings and more complex or more extensive purposes require greater constraints in terms of their number and force.  The breadth and depth of necessary constraints inevitably grows as one moves from the former to the latter.  Informality often reigns in the smaller and simpler gatherings.  Culturally shared expectations and morally derived guidance require little to no formality.  As size grows and purposes develop in complexity, eventually some explicit and formal constraints are added.  Working groups in a business combine efforts, having agreed upon a vision and the necessary government for achieving such a vision.  Agreements on work hours, salaries, inter-employee communication, responsibilities, accountabilities, and more must be verbally established or explicitly written down.  These constraints remain as long as mutually agreed upon and as long as the individual chooses to remain in the group. 

               With the larger sizes of cities, states, and nations, even further constraints work their way into the daily life including the daily life of the smaller gatherings found within the larger gatherings.  Each individual’s choice to leave the group requires a greater effort.  Leaving a city, a state, or a nation requires greater effort than leaving a job.  Each member of these larger gatherings are faced with greater consequences for transgressing the mutually agree upon constraints.  Laws go beyond exclusion from a group but include loss of privileges, loss of freedom, or loss of possessions.  Some of the constraints on the smaller groups arise from what is constrained in these societies on a larger scale.  Cities, states, and nations impose their constraints upon the smaller groups such as who may gather with whom, where they may gather, and how they may gather.  Gatherings which opposed or undermined the order and peace of the larger gatherings will be dissuaded or outright prohibited.

               This manner of considering gatherings requires viewing them not just as a physical or static collection of people, but as a dynamic relationally interactive gathering functioning as a unit towards a purpose. The need for the previously described constraints arises from aspects beyond the need for simple physical proximity.  People are more than a bunch of apples or oranges arranged in one box but interact in complex and dynamic ways with our thoughts, emotions, and desires influencing us continuously.  This dynamic and perpetual interplay make any given future moment into a multitude of possibilities which grow in number as the number of participants in the groups increases. Even understanding the dynamics of small groups can challenge comprehension both at the level of data volume and depth of perception.  Recording the circumstances of inter-participant interactions is hard enough.  Understanding the multi-layered out-workings of these interactions over time is practically impossible.  Understanding larger groups requires settling for less and less granularity in data comprehension.  Even the use of supercomputers cannot fully plumb the depth and breadth in predicting results. 

               Once this complexity is appreciated, we must then recognize that religions and philosophies compete for the position of operational worldview in directing the gathered members and their respective gatherings.  Each paradigm offers potential paradigms and explanations through which to understand reality.  With these paradigms come moralities and constraints with their values and beliefs.  Some attempt to raise out of the individual or the groups some innate and autonomous drive for group purpose. These fall short in that they usually hold little force for the participants to comply with their autonomous authority or end up with a multitude of individuals with conflicting paradigms.  Others seek to impose an external constraint from a higher power of some sort.  Such higher purposes can motivate and constrain far better than the post-modern individualism and autonomy previously addressed. 

               However, if the worldviews are just derived and contrived constructs rather than reflections of true reality, then such man-constructed worldviews will stumble at a variety of points in producing fruits for gathered.  Many will see through their artificiality and only submit superficially.  Without a mooring in reality, the constructs will continue to morph and not provide a lasting foundation on which to rest, i.e. serve only as shifting sands.  Without a shared confidence in their reality, the gathered will not be driven towards as much fruitful production.  Only with a worldview based in reality, one based in the Christian view of man as a created being under God’s authority, living out that being through doing in a dynamic perpetual society of life can real gathering produce real fruit for a real purpose. Proper governing of the gathered can only develop within such a shared Christian worldview.

               With God and His directions for gathering, the actual gathering can lead to fruit which feeds the gathered.  God’s guidance serves as the best constraints for the small and the large gatherings.  In small gatherings, the purposes must be chosen which seek out what God’s Word sets up as right purposes.  With such right purposes, not only are the individuals directed towards a Godly target, but both the individual in themselves and in relation to others can know their rights and responsibilities.  With such insight, a right ordering of the dynamics of ongoing life leads to not only potential for fulfilling the purpose of the gathering, but also the higher purpose of relating rightly to God and our neighbors.  In larger gatherings of daily life, the gathered should still look to the principles and orderings provided by their Creator.  Choosing to violate these principles of God as Sovereign will frustrate, hinder and disable the proper productivity of the cities, states and nations.

               In the end, we see a need for right purposes combined with right ordering of the gathered.  If the gathered hopes for pleasurable fruit from their ongoing dynamic efforts, the paradigm for reality must come from outside their gathering, from something or someone larger than the largest group.  It cannot just come from individuals within the group like a social contract.  The higher purpose and the right ordering must come from a higher source than the gathering itself.  Therefore, we as Christians must look for how to govern truly towards the Words of the One who eternally govern all things.  If we are to govern ourselves and our gatherings, we must gather according to the constraints of our Sovereign Creator.  The clay must submit to the hands of the Potter rather than attempt to fashion itself.

Next in the Series: True Governing in Specific Settings