KEN GARFIELD It's the relationship people seek through church

The more I sit beside you at worship and talk to you after the benediction about your faith, the more I realize:
It's not religion that many of us want today more than anything.
It's relationships.
It almost doesn't matter whether we pray to Christ or Allah, whether we recite the Shema on Friday night in the synagogue or the Lord's Prayer Sunday morning in church. What matters is whether our faith can lead us to relationships that take life to a richer, deeper, more hopeful place.
To many, it doesn't matter whether such a relationship is with God first, or another soul who is searching for something more.
We're all searching
I see and hear it every day.
I visited Lake Forest Community Church in Cornelius, N.C., on a recent Sunday to interview soap-star-turned-children's-minister Marcy Smith and could barely hear her for all the noise.
It was church members talking and laughing in the hall before the service -- worshippers transformed into friends by their faith. I suspect many couldn't tell you much about the sermon or Scripture verse they heard that morning. But they can still feel the warmth from church -- a bond not always found in the neighborhood or on the job.
When leaders at Calvary Church announced the hiring of the Rev. John Munro as senior pastor, they praised his shepherd's heart. He might be the most captivating orator ever to grace a pulpit. But it's his gift of relating to people that will first endear him to the congregation.
I've seen clergy at their most life-changing not in a pulpit but in a hospital, not dissecting a Bible verse but holding a trembling hand before surgery.
Women's circle. Temple brotherhood and sisterhood. Mothers' morning out. Serving a meal at the homeless shelter with your Sunday school class. Friday night fish fry at your parish. Ask most anyone involved in any of it and the answer will affirm a common theme.
What do you get out of it?
Relationships that comfort me, that challenge me to be a better person, that, most of all, help me to see I'm not alone in an often-lonely world.
God's there. So are other people seeking his touch.
A smile, a wink
The thing I remember most about growing up with faith?
Cantor David Benedict sharing a mischievous smile and quick wink during the service.
Cantor Benedict passed away. I couldn't tell you a word that was said during any of the services I attended with my parents 40 years ago.
But I remember a cantor who cared enough about me to catch my eye and cast my life in a golden light of faith that has not dimmed.
I don't mean to minimize scholarship, service and all the other blessed things we find in a house of God.
I just think people are looking first for that light to shine on them, the light that comes from knowing someone out there is watching over us.
Knight Ridder Newspapers