bodley's librarian adaptively reused churches and former churches hi bencherlite i've distinguished adaptively reused churches from former churches because former churches could refer to any church building no longer used as a church which would include demolition closure abandonment ruin etc adaptively reused is an historic preservation architectural conservation term for the reuse of a structure for churches this would include continuation as a church but for a different christian denomination hope this clarifies that neither category is really a subcategory of each other although they do heavily overlap i believe some mistake were made thank you for catching the st cross and hove articles adaptive reuse is the standard term in the architectural conservation historic preservation restoration industry used as a keyword in nearly every publication on the subject