But today, the membership has dwindled to some 200, with about 50 percent actually attending services. On Palm Sunday this year, fewer than a dozen children carry palm fronds down the aisle to start the service, and for those with bad singing voices, it's too difficult to lip-sync to the hymns—the united voice of the congregation barely brushes the eardrum.

Another Holy Week service, an afternoon Mass at St. Martin's Catholic Church in Sunnyvale, shows an entirely different situation: The small chapel is packed with young Hispanic men, an Indian woman in traditional sari dress and an Asian mother whose daughter is spinning in the aisles.

These scenarios aren't unique to these congregations—some well-established churches in Silicon Valley have found themselves strapped and their memberships eroding as rising housing costs push longtime members and potential staff out of the area. But other congregations are seeing their demographics change as names like Santos and Wong appear on church bulletins instead of Smith and Jones. All churches are grappling with these changes in a variety of ways.

The Rev. Art Domingue, interim minister at Union Church, is diversifying his Sunday services. "We've changed what happens in worship," he says. "It's easier to understand—we don't place high premiums on being highly liturgical." On Palm Sunday, he moves around on a platform instead of hiding behind his pulpit. His sermon compares his experiences with the Memorial Day parade in his hometown to Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem. On previous Sundays, he's discussed subjects as varied as Harriet Tubman and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Domingue took over at Union Church in January for a retiring minister and found the older congregation in need of a religious transfusion. "In the past four to five years, they kept getting told that they had to change their ways and fit to the world," he says. "They were really down on themselves." Domingue's efforts have slowly started to yield results due to the more dynamic services and rededicating the church's efforts.

"Their mindset is beginning to change. They've gone back and affirmed their passion for this church," he says. The low membership numbers don't worry Domingue. Union Church's land is fully paid off, a church endowment is firmly in place and enough donations still pour in to provide $16,000 worth of donations to local charitable organizations. "They want to be a serving church, and it only takes 20 members to do that," Domingue says.

But the church is still pulling in foreign newcomers, much like it did when it was founded in the 19th century. Therese Bratberg came to the area from Norway to attend San José State University in 2000 and joined Union Church in December in anticipation of her June wedding. "I was just driving around looking for a place, and after I talked to some people there, I saw how friendly they were," she says. "It's a small church and you get to know people there."

Bratberg's father, who still lives in Norway, is a retired Lutheran minister. But she says the worship at Union Church is just as traditional as her experience has been in the past. "In the church at home, we might read more from the Bible, but things are kind of similar," she says.

Despite Bratberg's addition, recruitment has not been a priority for Domingue in his short time at Union Church. He sees the many Asian children playing at the Montessori School Villa next door, but few of their parents in his congregation.

Reaching out

One way of increasing visibility for Domingue is to open church buildings to similar groups in the community, including the Crystal Children's Choir, for reduced costs. "Churches in very secular areas use the arts to relate to the community and say that sacred space is important to society," he says. Throughout the months of May and June, there are nine recitals scheduled at Union Church from a number of multiethnic performing groups.

Nearby St. Jude's Episcopal Church also reaches out to augment its plateauing membership. The Rev. Mary Blessing, associate rector at St. Jude's, says she has seen many retired members move out of the area, and the immigrants that move in are more likely to attend services at independent churches in their native language. "We're a mainline church and based in tradition. We have accountability all the way to Canterbury in England," she says. "It's hard attracting people who aren't already Anglican because we're so ritualized."

Along with tweaking its worship service, St. Jude's holds a number of community meetings, including educational forums every Sunday. One such forum recently featured a primer on the Chinese culture. The church's members share their space with a Korean Pentecostal church and have hosted Christmas celebrations in the Indian tradition, and while St. Jude's has helped and volunteered for the Lunar New Year Unity Parade, the church members have also found the timing of the event conflicts with quiet days prescribed by Lent.

St. Jude's was founded in 1962, and Blessing describes the early membership as "WASP" (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). There were a few families who left the church when Blessing's colleague, the Rev. Karen Siegfriedt, became the church's first female head rector, but overall, the congregation has rolled with the changing demographic tides.

A noon service on Wednesdays attracts a number of Filipinos and Chinese as well as students from De Anza College across the street. Some Asians with Baptist backgrounds have joined the church, though Blessing also speaks to immigrants who were raised in Buddhist or agnostic families. "By coming to us, they're going against what their family wants," she says. "We don't want to go against that."

Blessing says that St. Jude's is aware it will need to make some changes to reflect the growing interest among immigrants, including the addition of Asian staff members. She points to her next-door neighbor, the New Life Church, as an example to follow because it has already made efforts in recruiting minority clergy. However, this personnel issue is not exclusive to St. Jude's.

West Valley Presbyterian Church, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, has seen similar need arise in its congregation according to the Rev. Ron McHattie. "Within the next five years, we'll have an Asian on staff because we need to better reflect the community," he says. "We've always been a family-oriented church, but just who those families are is changing." He says that while many first-generation immigrants belong to foreign-language churches, many of their children grow up learning English and join more mainstream congregations.

Victor Wang is one of those second-generation children. His parents still go to a Chinese language church, which he disliked as a youngster growing up in Cupertino. "I just didn't know anyone," he says. "My best friend in elementary school, his family went to West Valley. I slept over on a Saturday night and asked my mom if I could go, and she said yes. It just felt more comfortable."

Throughout high school, Wang was involved with the youth group and mission trips, even more so than the friend who introduced him to the church. Now 21 and a student at UCLA, Wang still attends West Valley when he's home on breaks.

Cost of living

The gradual diversification is just one sign of the times at West Valley. McHattie says that the congregation is still strong enough to financially support its many programs, including its youth ministry. But an odd problem has arisen: There are no children younger than kindergarten age in the program. McHattie says he's only seeing families tackle the costs of living in the area in order to send their children to nearby schools. "We're not unique in this," he says. "Children who are raised in the community and leave, most can't afford to move back."

West Valley has also seen rising housing costs affect how it recruits staff members. "This is a human-service-oriented occupation," McHattie explains. "Our greatest handicap is how landlocked we are. We're trying to get ourselves into housing—we bought a duplex in the community for our potential staff members." Housing is a problem for other congregations as well.

Domingue is only scheduled to serve as interim minister at Union Church through July 19, and the search for a permanent replacement has hit some snags. "Most candidates will not be able to afford housing in proximity of the church," he says. "We need to reinvest funds into properties in order to deal with that problem." Blessing herself is forced to live in Morgan Hill instead of Cupertino, and St. Jude's helped pay for the head rector's condominium.

While Catholic churches provide housing for their priests, many have the same problems with other staff members. At St. Cyprian's Catholic Church in Sunnyvale, Campbell resident Jill Snoeberger has worked as the administrative assistant in the parish office since 1991. She grew up in Sunnyvale and her family attends St. Cyprian's. Her daughter even goes to the elementary school on-site. But she and her husband can't afford to live nearby.

"It takes 20 to 25 minutes to get here, but a comparable townhouse in Sunnyvale would cost at least $100,000 more," she says. While other comparably skilled workers might look for better pay elsewhere, Snoeberger says she'll stay on at St. Cyprian's. "Salary was not the key draw, but it is more competitive now than when I first started."

Such housing issues have become a priority for her fellow parishioners. The Rev. Timothy Kidney, the parish priest, says that a survey of social justice concerns among St. Cyprian's members showed the housing conundrum as their first concern. "There are apartments surrounding us that are crowded with very poor families. The crash lowered rates for the middle class, but now it's two sharing space instead of three," he says. "It's not just a planning issue. It's a moral issue."

Social activism

The parish is pursuing the issue in a number of ways. St. Cyprian's held a forum for the eight city council candidates in October to gauge where affordable housing fit on their agendas. "None of them had mentioned it as a priority," Kidney says. "They were surprised by how many people showed up. There were 87 people—four times as many people as attended the other forums." Kidney and his staff are meeting with council members to keep the dialogue running.

They also appeared before the Sunnyvale Planning Commission on March 22 and the city council on April 6 to support a plan to turn the Sunnyvale Inn on W. Weddell Drive into high-density housing. The plan passed with the approval of both the planning commission and the city council.

Housing is not the only way the sour economy has affected the parish. The school on the St. Cyprian property has seen its enrollment drop to the point where Kidney has to recruit students to keep the campus viable, especially with a recent $5 million project that built a new kindergarten building and refurbished the gym.

St. Cyprian's currently educates 237 children from kindergarten through eighth grade, and Kidney hopes to get the numbers up to 270 and 280 over the next few years. Two-thirds of the students come from outside the parish, including many from outside Sunnyvale, so Kidney is focusing a campaign on preschools in the area. "Only one school has closed in the diocese, and we try to keep our tuition low, but we're still struggling for the amount of students that makes us comfortable," he says.

The low parochial enrollment also affects another Catholic parish in Sunnyvale, St. Martin's Catholic Church. But according to the Rev. Ben Manding, St. Martin's has seen many symptoms of Silicon Valley's problems, but it is weathering the changes. As one of the largest religions in the world, the Roman Catholic Church is a common affiliation of Hispanics, Vietnamese and Filipinos who move into the homes vacated by those leaving the area, so their congregation has thrived.

Manding, a Filipino, joined the parish in 1981. "At that time, I thought I was the only minority," he says. "At the first parish function, I felt uncomfortable because they were all Anglos." Not long after his arrival, however, the growing numbers of Hispanics requested Spanish-language services. Just this year, St. Martin's began offering Vietnamese worship, and Manding says he's handled weddings, baptisms and confessions in several languages. "The church respects all cultures. People feel comfortable in their own," he says.

In fact, St. Martin's staff has followed suit. While Manding was the one person of color on staff when he first arrived, he has since been joined by Tanzanian and Vietnamese priests, in addition to one who's Caucasian-American. The only trouble they've encountered, he said, was a slight drop in church donations because Anglos are historically the biggest church supporters, but they're dealing with the setback.

The shift to a more diverse worship did catch many longtime church members off-guard. St. Martin's is Sunnyvale's oldest church, its founding date in 1916. "It's human nature," Manding says. "Some were wondering if we were splitting into two churches." Over time, leaders of each segment of the church's population got involved with parish-wide activities and began attending services in all languages. For instance, the president of the school board is a Filipina woman, and the capital chairperson is Chinese.

So while Manding recognizes that things have changed, he says that the solution is ingrained in the Christian tradition. The proof is visible at the late afternoon Mass, as worshippers of varying ages and skin colors repeat the same prayers Catholics have recited for centuries, but all in one language. "It's always challenging in the beginning," Manding says. "But every community, every family takes some time."