Here's the church, but where are the people?

The Boston Globe reports:

There was a time when the First United Methodist Church here was a hub of activity, with a booming school, regular church suppers, and worshipers who packed the pews of the white steepled building.
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No more. The congregation has been dwindling for years and now is barely hanging on.

On a recent Sunday, just five worshipers gathered in the 300-seat church to pray at the 11 a.m. service. The Rev. Peggy Kieras sat alone by the grand wooden pulpit, cradling a remote control for the compact disc player that provides music for hymns, just underneath the towering pipes of the unused organ.

"I have a sliding scale number," she said, explaining how the size of the congregation governs how she presides during worship. "If it's over four, I preach from the pulpit. If it's less than four, I sit in a pew."

At a time when the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and other Catholic dioceses around the nation have been closing parishes that attract as many as several hundred worshipers a week, Protestant denominations are supporting congregations a fraction of that size. Although both Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations face falling attendance at worship, these different branches of the Christian family are taking radically different approaches to determining whether a congregation is viable, and who should decide what to do about a failing church.

Catholic dioceses, with power strongly concentrated in the hands of bishops and a theology that says only priests can celebrate Mass, are citing declining numbers of worshipers, dollars, and clergy in moving aggressively to consolidate churches. The Archdiocese of Boston has closed nearly one-quarter of its parishes over the past decade. But Protestant denominations, which often emphasize congregational independence and democratic decision-making, are leaving many of their small churches open, avoiding the controversy that has characterized the Catholic process but allowing for a sizable number of struggling, even moribund, congregations with minimal programming and part-time clergy.