What was stirring were not creatures.

It was worse. Much worse. The soft patting sounds that the Rev. Stephen Harding and I heard inside St. Peter’s Church Chelsea — the “Christmas Church” that owes its existence to Clement Clarke Moore — came from rainwater. It percolated through the tin-and-timber roof and the lath-and-plaster Gothic ceiling vaults, dripping down to the balcony floor.

St. Peter’s needs a lot of help, about $15 million worth, Father Harding estimates.

In that respect, it is like many mainstream houses of worship used by congregations that are now only a fraction of their original size.

Few of those, however, are as closely tied to their neighborhoods as St. Peter’s is to Chelsea. Even today, its illuminated tower clock is as prominent in the streetscape as a harvest moon, glimpsed through treetops over the rowhouses nestled snugly around it.

Consecrated in 1838, St. Peter’s, at 346 West 20th Street near Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, is one of the oldest Gothic Revival churches in New York. Today, it is home to an Episcopal body founded in 1831 that Father Harding serves as interim pastor, and to the Chelsea Community Church, a nondenominational body founded in 1975.