New Use for Sacred Spaces. A Europe without churcheshardly imaginable, but no longer completely absurd. In rural areas, as well as in the urban fabric, church buildings are still common yet the membership numbers of Christian denominations are shrinking steadily. The Central German state of Thuringia represents an example of this development of its 2,000 church buildings, 500 stand vacant. However, churches are not just places of worship they are prototypes of public buildings, thus collective action is required to maintain church buildings as cultural assets and sites of community. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the