As soon, then, as the leading Brethren in Herrnhut--such as John de Watteville, Leonard Dober, David Nitschmann, the Syndic, Frederick Köber, and others--had recovered from the shock occasioned by Zinzendorf's death, they set about the difficult task of organizing the work of the whole Moravian Church. First, they formed a provisional Board of Directors, known as the Inner Council; next, they despatched two messengers to America, to summon the practical Spangenberg home to take his place on the board; and then, at the earliest convenient opportunity, they summoned their colleagues to Marienborn for the first General Representative Synod of the Renewed Church of the Brethren. As the Count had left the affairs of the Church in confusion, the task before the Brethren was enormous {1764.}. They had their Church constitution to frame; they had their finances to straighten out; they had their mission in the world to define; they had, in a word, to bring order out of chaos; and so difficult did they find the task that eleven years passed away before it was accomplished to any satisfaction. For thirty years they had been half blinded by the dazzling brilliance of Zinzendorf; but now they began to see a little more clearly. As long as Zinzendorf was in their midst, an orderly system of government was impossible. It was now an absolute necessity. The reign of one man was over; the period of constitutional government began. At all costs, said the sensible Frederick Köber, the Count must have no successor. For the first time the Synod was attended by duly elected congregation deputies: those deputies came not only from Germany, but from Great Britain, America and the mission-field; and thus the voice of the Synod was the voice, not of one commanding genius, but of the whole Moravian Church. The first question to settle was the Church's Mission. For what purpose did the Moravian Church exist? To that question the Brethren gave a threefold answer. First, they said, they must labour in the whole world; second, their fundamental doctrine must be the doctrine of reconciliation through the merits of the life and sufferings of Christ as set forth in the Holy Scriptures and in the Augsburg Confession; and, third, in their settlements they would continue to enforce that strict discipline--including the separation of the sexes--without which the Gospel message would be a mockery. Thus the world was their parish, the cross their message, the system of discipline their method.