This article seeks to explain the "order" in which the path came to be as well as the "order" embodied in the way followers are, and should be, related and connected to one another within the Tenrikyo community.

This path originated from Oyasama, as is made clear in several Divine Directions such as the following:

It was a woman who started the one origin.

Osashizu, July 31, 1888

She was not a well-known person. She was just an ordinary person on a farm, a woman who knew nothing. She was no one special. But understand well the truth that it was She who taught the ultimate teaching.

Osashizu, January 8, 1888

In full accord with God's intention, Oyasama laid the path of single-hearted salvation and demonstrated the path of the Divine Model through Her own example in order to save all people throughout the world.

Embraced by Oyasama's parental love, our earliest predecessors were drawn forth to the path and were saved from the brink of death or the depths of despair. They felt overwhelming gratitude to Her, adored Her, and single-heartedly leaned on Her. They sought and followed Her Divine Model. They cast away their self-centered thoughts, let go of their human thinking, and emulated the Divine Model. In the process, they also managed to lead a great number of people to salvation. These people in turn adored those followers of Oyasama and came to gather around them. Guided and encouraged by their virtue and parental love, the new followers sought the Divine Model and roused themselves in the cause of the path of single-hearted salvation, and their efforts resulted in guiding more newcomers to the path of faith. Such was the "order" in which the path came to be and grow.

It was during that course of the development of the path that the relationships were spontaneously formed between those who provide guidance and those who receive it, and those who take the lead in walking the path and those who follow in their footsteps, missionaries and their disciples, and head ministers and their followers. Such relationships, however, have nothing to do with hierarchy and rank, or rights and obligations. The early followers who received Oyasama's guidance followed the path of the Divine Model single-heartedly--while at the same time helping others be saved and guiding them to the path--and then those who followed in their predecessors' footsteps spontaneously came to gather around them. Such is the way the "order" manifests itself in relationships between followers.

God says:

In this path, whoever is ahead of others should nurture them in due order. In daily life, as well, whichever brother is born first is the elder one. There is an order there. Such is this truth. Such is this path.

Osashizu, September 19, 1898

The relationships and ties among followers within the church and diocese community are maintained and settled by the principle of "the path of order"--in which followers who were guided to the path a step ahead of others take the initiative to implement the Divine Model of Oyasama and thereby set an example for others--rather than by the worldly common principle of democracy, much less authoritarianism or feudalism.