Worshippers at Grace Chapel in Lexington MA

"Megachurches as a whole are significantly better than other congregations at holding together multiracial, multiethnic congregations," said Scott Thumma, an expert on megachurches and a professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. "It's absolutely clear."

A study by Thumma and the Leadership Network, a Dallas group that works with pioneering churches, found that minorities make up 20 percent or more of worshippers in nearly one-third of the nation's 1,200 megachurches. More than half of the megachurches say they are intentionally working to attract different ethnic groups, according to the 2005 study, part of a book that Thumma and network executive Dave Travis will publish in July.

A decade ago, Grace Chapel was nearly all white, said Dana Baker, pastor of multicultural ministries. Now, Baker estimates that at least one-quarter of worshippers are minorities, with Chinese, Koreans and Haitians comprising the largest group.

"We saw the changing demographics and understood that something unique was happening here and we wanted to be intentional about it," said Baker, who coordinates the church's multicultural outreach that started two years ago.

A 2005 Faith Communities Today survey found mixed-ethnicity congregations were more likely to grow.

David Ting, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a Grace Chapel elder, has seen this firsthand. When he and his wife first joined the megachurch a decade ago, they were "very much in the minority" as Chinese-Americans, he said. But at a recent church Christmas pageant, he realized that the children's choir had transformed: about a third of the singers were Asian.