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A church which was amalgamating parishes, having difficulty recruiting priests - even from traditional sources of supply such as Ireland - and was seeing declining attendances has suddenly experienced a dramatic infusion of new blood. Most English parishes experience such huge congregations rarely, perhaps only for the Christmas Eve midnight mass, where revellers from the pubs on their annual visit to church boost the numbers in the pews for one night only. In English churches where separate monthly masses are held for local Poles they are often better attended than ordinary Sunday services.

"It is the Catholic community's biggest opportunity and biggest challenge," said Francis Davis, director of the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge who is carrying out a study of the new arrivals for Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O'Connor, leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales, and Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who heads the Birmingham diocese.

"In terms of its own life this is a huge opportunity. They are bringing new energy, new life and new resources and networks into the Catholic community. They are bringing a faith of their own that is so vibrant you can chew it. And they will have an unquantifiable effect on the whole debate about the future of faith schools.

"The challenge is in the mutual lack of understanding, not only between the local population and the new arrivals, but within the Polish community, between those who came because of Communism and the young economic migrants. There are 35,000 in the Southampton area alone - more than was expected for the whole country. "

Our Lady Mother of the Church is a little bit of Poland in London. Under the 19th-century stained glass Anglicanised saints stand icons of the Virgin Mary and Catholic stations of the cross - the 14 incidents that Catholics commemorate along Christ's path from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate to his burial in the tomb on Good Friday - now line the walls. The Marian Fathers hold seven masses in Polish each Sunday, the earliest at 8.30am, the last 12 hours later, three masses each weekday and five on Fridays and holy days.

For this Sunday morning's service the church is crowded with at least a thousand people: elderly men and women who first came to Britain during the second world war and never went home after their country was taken over by the Communists, middle-aged refugees from the same regime and young men -and some women - who have come to try their economic luck now Poland is part of the EU. Kneeling fervently on the tiled floor in the lobby during the Communion prayers, booming out over their heads from loudspeakers, are men in their 20s dressed casually in bomber jackets, jeans and trainers.

On the wall above them is a framed certificate from Pope John Paul II and in the little bookstall at the back, presided over by two grandmotherly women, are Polish papers, prayer books, statuettes of the Virgin from the national shrine at Czestochowa, English dictionaries and, incongruously, David Beckham's biography. The piety is almost tangible.

As the congregation leaves, people are already queueing outside for the next service. Marek and Malgosia, huddling under an umbrella, say they are pleased to come to mass as it keeps them in touch with home and everyone speaks their language. They have been living in Hanwell, west London, for a year, Marek working as an electrician, Malgosia as a maid in a hotel, sending money home and one day hoping to return to Krakow.

The figures are disputed, but more than 500,000 Poles have registered for work in the last two years, though it is calculated that up to 40% of those were here already.

Janusz Wach, the Polish consul general, said: "This is a new phenomenon. Of course it raises eyebrows that churches here are most of the time empty in the UK, very different from in Poland.

"It is striking for me too to see that the older members of the community here do not see how reality changes and the reasons for Poles to come here now are totally different from why they came. That's no reason to blame them for being here."

Coming from a deeply Catholic country, many of the migrants seek out local churches. The Polish Catholic Mission in England and Wales, in existence since the second world war, is busily recruiting priests back in Poland to meet demand: it now recognises 83 Polish communities and has 163 centres where mass is celebrated, many in areas such as East Anglia which have never had a Polish presence before. The mission's priests are spread thin: one for the whole of Devon and Cornwall, not many more to cover Wales. They spend their Sundays driving from one mass to the next.

Father Miroslaw Cukier is one such priest, covering Kent from his base in Sevenoaks. He says mass twice a month there, and monthly in Tunbridge Wells, Gravesend, Canterbury, Ashford and Margate. A priest for 16 years, he previously served in Nottingham, London, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.

"We have three generations here but most are very young. They are very often lonely. They come to me with their problems. They will go to Catholic churches and even other churches, not realising they are not Catholic, but they say it is difficult to say the prayers or understand the sermons."

At the other end of the country, in the diocese of Aberdeen which covers the whole of the north of Scotland including the Orkneys and Shetlands, earlier this year the church instituted a recruitment drive for priests in Poland. It now has five. One, who learned English from scratch in nine months, is now the parish priest of Fraserborough and Peterhead. The diocesan magazine now includes a page in Polish.

Father Paul Bonnici, a priest in the Orkneys, who is of Maltese origin, said: "They are bringing their own traditions and expertise with them. It all adds to the tapestry. We have Poles all over the place now, thousands of them. They are working in the fishing industry, agriculture, catering and hotels. The priests are very busy and they travel long distances to say mass."

Monsignor Tadeusz Kukla is vicar-delegate to the Polish Mission in England, based in Islington.

"In Poland there is a drainage of the brain," he said. "The Poles who come here are searching for a community, just as they are in France and Germany, Spain and Italy, and, of course, they want to fulfil their religious obligations. We think 50% to 60% of them are going to mass. They are setting a very good example to the English. Polish people are not saints but they are trying to be a good witness. You can see them standing or kneeling in the streets outside church if they cannot squeeze inside. I think they could bring good traditions here, bring back devotion to Mary, church processions for Easter and Corpus Christi festivals. They will remind the English of what they have lost."

English bishops are rather more cautious. The Right Rev Kieran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton, said: "We have had a 1.5% increase in congregations in the last year and we assume they are mainly immigrants, either from Poland or the Philippines. This is not the church they left behind in Poland and we face the dilemma of how we can be of service to them.

"Many of them have minimal contact with our own congregations. I think the renewal of the English church has to come from inside, it cannot be by people from outside."

Behind the words of welcome is caution. The English church wants the new migrants to integrate eventually with English congregations rather than remaining in their Polish ghettos.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said: "They should be seen as far as possible as contributing to the whole church and not part of it - that would be a concern. I would hope that, step by step, they would become more integrated. We want their contribution to Catholic witness and it will be more effective as part of the normal Catholic community. I would want that as soon as possible."

Pentecostalists

If you were asked to name Europe's largest church, a two-storey building between a bus depot and Hackney's greyhound stadium in east London might not immediately head the list, when set against St Peter's in Rome or Canterbury's crumbling gothic cathedral. But the Kingsway International Christian Centre - known as KICC - is not being modest when it makes that claim. It may even be right, as it estimates that it has 12,000 people through its doors to services every Sunday.

Amid perennial gloom about the long, slow decline in attendances at England's traditional white churches, almost unnoticed the so-called black churches with their vibrant services and their largely Afro-Caribbean and African congregations are growing exponentially.

The exuberance, fervour and numbers of their congregations are leaving the more established churches far behind. Take Esme Beswick, brought up an Anglican in Jamaica. She remembers the experience of coming to England in 1961 to train as a nurse in Kent: "There was a problem attending certain churches. In the Pentecostal churches you got a feeling of warmth and comradeship. Their services are very joyous. It is a great atmosphere with the songs and music."

Indeed it is and not just among Pentecostalists belonging to the charismatic, evangelical - and sometimes fundamentalist - churches, launched in the US a century ago. Pentecostalism currently counts as one of the fastest growing Christian denominations in the world. Across the globe it has more than 120 million believers, many in developing countries, and claims to gain perhaps 20 million adherents a year.

In Britain there are estimated to be about 1.7 million believers, which would put the denomination into third place behind Anglicans and Catholics. More than half of all Britain's Pentecostal churches have predominantly black congregations and half of them are in London.

David Voas, of Manchester University's school of social sciences, said: "Black churchgoers in inner London are an important source of growth in the context of the national decline in church attendance ... the Pentecostals have appeared out of nowhere in the last couple of decades, but it remains to be seen whether they can make significant inroads into the white population."

In the foyer of the KICC, where the congregation for the next service starts queueing half an hour before the previous service ends, the word of Pastor Matthew is everywhere. A poster announces that his on-air ministry is viewed by a potential audience of several hundred million across the world each week. Leaflets are being handed out, incongruously illustrated with the iconic image of American troops raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima, inviting the congregation to Cross Over and Take Over, an eight hour party and praise meeting spreading across New Year's Eve.

In south London, in his office above his church in a converted print works on Brixton Hill, sits Bishop John Francis, dressed in jeans, trainers and a check jacket. He runs Ruach Ministries - ruach being a Hebrew word for breath of God - for a mainly African-Caribbean congregation. Even the prime minister stopped by earlier in the year to acknowledge his success.

The bishop, 41, followed his late father into the ministry and was made a bishop by a chap from an affiliated church in Canada. "When you don't have faith, you don't have focus," he said. "We are a spiritual people. There is a change of culture in terms of the way God is presented in this country. We believe in using all the avenues that are available to us. We are on cable TV - it all helps get God's message of Jesus Christ out.

"I think a lot of traditional white churches may find it hard to connect with 21st century technology. I am very passionate about what I do: it comes out when I preach."

The message is likely to be firmly based on the Bible and scripturally conservative, although the church leaders insist that does not mean they exclude potential worshippers such as gay people. In Hackney, Bishop Wayne Malcolm runs Christian Life City. "I would say we are true to Biblical teaching in a very compassionate way. The Bible as written is inerrant. It is very clear to us that, while people wrote the Bible, God inspired them. Yes, I am a Creationist but the seven days were periods of time, maybe aeons."

It is an entrepreneurial church style. The pastors drive big cars and wear smart, well-cut suits.

Bishop Wayne says: "It is important for us that pastors do not give the impression that serving God equals a life of poverty, as has been the way in the traditional churches. Of course poor people can be very spiritual but so can rich people. The fact that we love the poor doesn't mean that we love poverty. Our people are already poor - they want role models and if the only ones they have are hip-hop artists and pimps what sort of message does that give?"

Christians in numbers

·71.6% of respondents to the 2001 census identified themselves as Christian (42 million). One in four Britons attend a service at least once a month.

· The average weekly attendance at Church of England services is 1.2 million. More people attend C of E services than are members of all the political parties. Mass attendance in England and Wales is now 960,000, compared with 1.3 million in 1991.

·In 2001 a poll for Catholic weekly The Tablet showed that despite forming only 11% of the population Catholics make up 26% of all those who regularly attend a religious service. This makes them the largest denominational churchgoing population.

· A Christian Research census in 2005 found that 83% of Christians in England are white and 10% black; in London 44% are black and 14% from other non-white groups.

· Polish migrants have boosted the Catholic Church in Scotland, with congregations increasing by 50,000 since Poland joined the EU in 2004. Of the 400,000 migrants who have arrived in Britain around a third are said to be practising Catholics.

·The total number of monks in England and Wales stands at 1,345, many of whom are in their sixties and seventies. In 2004 just 12 men joined monasteries. Nuns total 1,150. In 1982 100 women entered a convent but by 2004 the number had declined to seven.

· A 2005 survey by Opinion Research Business found that 43% of Britons expected to attend a church service over Christmas, a 10% increase in five years. Statistics released this week show that 2,785,800 worshippers attended C of E Christmas services last year, an increase of 156,500 on 2004.