One morning in the state of New York, I woke with an unexpected image in my mind's eye. It was a young man asking, "What IS the church, anyway?"

He seemed to represent the several teenagers traveling with their families on a church history tour that had just gotten under way.

The day before, we had been at the Whitmer home and other sites in New York. We had repeatedly referred to "the church." It was lost from the earth anciently. It was restored. It was organized. People joined it. People persecuted it. It met. It moved. It grew. It is true.



At daybreak, we would board a bus and move on to Kirtland, Ohio. That morning I realized that during our trip of 250 miles, we should try to start answering that simple question. It might take the whole tour. It might take the rest of our lives. Just what IS the church, anyway?

Nowhere does the Lord use the word "church" to mean a building. And he doesn't ever suggest that "church" means a meeting. My early morning phantom might have thought, based on how we sometimes use the word, that it is a meeting manufacturer restored to the earth. "True church means true meetings, and lots of them." But if that's all it is, why all the fuss?

En route, we tried to imagine what the church must have meant to the new converts who migrated those 250 miles in 1831. They were beginning to see that this wasn't just another meeting-sponsoring institution. They were immersed in something far more than the winner of some worldwide religion contest.

The head of this singular church -- the Lord Jesus Christ -- had calmly asked them to cancel all their plans for the rest of their lives, clear out of their homes and farms and social networks, and move hundreds of miles away (Doctrine and Covenants 37:3).

They would never return. You don't recast your whole mortal existence for a mere building, nor for a menu of meetings, nor even for a wonderful religious group.

Nearly two years previous to organizing his church, the Lord had made a promise to all who would ever belong to it: "Whosoever is of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, him will I establish upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them" (Doctrine and Covenants 10:69).

In time, those migrants would come to realize the majesty of that promise. But they also would learn more about what the Lord meant by "endureth."

One group of endurers, numbering several dozen, began their migration from Colesville, N.Y. -- site of the first organized branch of the church. Like all faithful members, they were linked with God by an official covenant. That, in turn, meant something else: they were partners in his dramatic plans for the final dispensation.

They could not yet understand those plans. They did understand that the covenant linked them to each other. So, sharing a small fleet of wagons to hold basic belongings, they made the move -- together.

After a brief stay in Ohio, they moved on to Missouri, again by commandment, again by virtue of being part of the divine church, and again side by side. They moved on repeatedly -- not only enduring, but enduring together.

To follow the track of church history sites is to follow the Colesville Branch all the way to the West. The hallowed trail of frequent joys and occasional tears was left by people who were welded to each other, and to history, and to God himself. The weld will hold forever. The Colesville Branch is one more reminder of what all the fuss is about.

Wayne E. Brickey, who lives in Gallatin, Mo., is a retired Church Educational System teacher and curriculum writer and has been a tour guide to Holy Land and Mormon history sites. His novel "Before His Manger: The Long Wait for Christ's First Coming" is serialized in weekly segments Fridays on MormonTimes.com.