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The United Methodist Church, like other mainline denominations, is steadily losing members. Yet it has some large, thriving congregations, and about 100 of its churches draw more than 1,200 people on a typical weekend.

Sometimes, however, pastors of those big Methodist churches feel unappreciated or out of place in a nationwide church body that decentralizes authority and lauds committee work more than it does popular pastors.

Displaying swift adaptability in the early 2000s, America’s largest congregations may be reshaping institutional church life, suggests a national megachurch survey, the third conducted in eight years.

“In some sense megachurches can be seen as becoming de facto replacements for denominations in that they are duplicating many of the functions of these bureaucratic national bodies,” wrote the coauthors of the study of about 400 Protestant congregations that draw more than 1,800 adults and children on a typical weekend.