Under the title "Does God no longer live here?", DEN NORSKE KIRKE organised a two-day Nordic conference on extended and new uses of church buildings together with the AHO, Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The aim was to facilitate the exchange of experiences within the Scandinavian churches on the topic and to recognise commonalities and possible future strategies.

On the first day, two keynote speeches initially looked outside Scandinavia: Greg Pickup, Managing Director of the Churches Conservation Trust of the Church of England, and Prof. Ulrich Königs, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, representing the transdisciplinary research group TRANSARA from Germany, provided insights into the developments of sacred space transformations in England and Germany.

On the second day, church representatives from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland as well as experts and architectural firms gave a total of 10 keynote speeches on the topics of the organisational and financing structure of church (conversion) buildings and on the topics of cultural heritage and the restoration of church (conversion) buildings in line with monument conservation requirements.

Both days were accompanied by panel discussions and reflections, and the conference was very well attended, which illustrates the relevance of the topic in Scandinavia.

Even if the development in England and Germany seems to be more advanced than in the Scandinavian countries, it became clear that the questions about the future use of our sacred spaces in Northern Europe have many parallels.

However, the traditional organisational structure as state churches in Scandinavia, the essentially Lutheran denomination and country-specific developments within Scandinavia reveal differences. The large number of empty village churches in sparsely populated areas of Scandinavia also differs significantly from the situation in the urban centres of England and Germany.

In the course of the conference, it emerged as a consensus that further use of the church buildings is the best way to protect them; exclusive museum conservation is only expedient in individual cases, and exclusively commercial use is met with scepticism. More flexibility with regard to funding and financing options and cultural heritage guidelines as well as a greater willingness to extend the use of sacred spaces would appear to be desirable.