One Chicago congregation-itself the result of a merger brought about by falling demographics and flat membership numbers-is trying to attack and remedy the problem rather than giving up.

Congregation Shaare Tikvah-B'nai Zion, a Conservative synagogue in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood, has a presidium of three younger members who are embarking on an exploration of ways to attract more members like themselves and even younger ones.

Rumors that the congregation might move or merge with another synagogue are no more than that, Rabbi Dennis Katz, its spiritual leader, said.

"We're always struggling, and we're always considering our options as to what we should do next, but there's not anything unusual in the offing," he said. "We always have financial problems, but I think we're in reasonably good shape for the reasonably close future."

The congregation today is the result of a merger three years ago between Shaare Tikvah and Congregation B'nai Zion, located in East Rogers Park in a neighborhood in which few Jews remained.

The merger was "a positive," Katz said. "It's worked out very well. It was a good fit and the people (from the two congregations) get along very well."

But even though many of B'nai Zion's 80 member families joined Shaare Tikvah's roster of 150 families, it wasn't enough of a boost in membership levels for the half-century-old synagogue whose imposing sanctuary seats more than 1,000 worshippers. The reason for the decline: "the suburbs, the suburbs, the suburbs," said Pinky Zaid, the synagogue's gabbai and program chairman who has been a member for more than 40 years.

"There used to be a time when over 1,000 people were members, but it's not so now," he said. "The young people, they move to the suburbs. We got no history for them. But we keep going, we've got new plans." Those plans include "advertising and calling Jewish people in the neighborhood and asking them to join," Zaid said. "We don't want to leave our building, we don't want to join somebody else but we would like others to join us. Money alone wouldn't help; members would be the best."

Carter Greene, one of three co- presidents, agrees. Both synagogues were struggling before the merger, he said, and now "we've got a more involved community, but it's an older community." At 45, he is one of the younger active members, and it's people like himself-and even younger-that the synagogue hopes to attract.

To that end, the co-presidents and other members are embarking on an exploration of such questions as "are we in the right location? Are we doing the right thing? What are young people looking for? There have to be a ton of unaffiliated young people on the North Side and the suburbs-how do we draw them in? What are people looking for?" Greene said.

They'll start with Sunday School and Hebrew School parents, meeting with them and asking those questions, Greene said. He also hopes to impress upon the parents that members are not looking for the synagogue to become "a bar mitzvah factory." One problem, in fact, is that after their child celebrates a bar or bat mitzvah, "we never see them again," Greene said. "We want people to be in synagogue because they want to be there, to become a part of a community."

Shaare Tikvah B'nai Zion has much to offer, Greene said, not the least of which is an impressive, beautiful building chock full of history.

When Greene's son celebrated his bar mitzvah recently, "my father's friends came and they said, this is what a shul is supposed to look like," he said. "You walk in here and you get chills. It would be great to preserve that in the city of Chicago rather than having to move to Skokie and buy a new building."

But, Green admits, such a building is expensive to maintain and run, and these days there are nowhere near a thousand worshippers filling the sanctuary. But he and the other co- presidents have hope. "If we could double our membership," he says, "I think we'd be OK."