Washington. Even to nonmembers, the church had become something of a community institution, and many fought hard against perceived changes. “You just get an incredible amount of abuse,” said Gharai, who spent about a year acquiring the necessary approvals to move forward.

“At an ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) meeting — I was there for the third or fourth time — one commissioner turned around, said, ‘You have got to be a masochist; I don’t know how you put up with this.’ ”

But perhaps more meaningful, and trickier, are interactions with the congregation itself. After all, a church is the repository of members’ deep emotions and most important moments, often generations’ worth, and that means deals often are not just strictly business. In some cases, developers partner with church leaders or agree to price a percentage of residential units affordably to align with churches’ missions.

Rubin, the developer renovating Way of the Cross, is simultaneously working on another church: Word of God Baptist Church. There, the situation has been anything but straightforward.

First, the church leaders had to trust him before they could agree on a sale. And then, Rubin said, “they turned to me and said, ‘We agree on the price, but we need to find a new place.’ ” He wound up spending the next 18 months searching for a new building for the congregation. “For a good while, I was talking to them every day. I looked at probably 20 or 30 buildings.”

Rubin finally found the congregation a new home in a church in University Park, Maryland — a bigger space than they’d had in the District — and negotiated the deal on their behalf. “I’m very proud of what we were able to do,” Rubin said. “It was a partnership as much as it was a transaction.”

Pastor John McCoy agreed. “They had a lot of sensitivity to our specific needs and congregation,” he said, adding that the business relationship has since deepened into a friendship.

Remembering that a church is more than brick and mortar is crucial when working with religious buildings, said Ben Heimsath, an architect in Austin, Texas, who specializes in church design and renovations.

“Sadly, I think there are as many examples of what not to do as there are positive reuse projects,” Heimsath said. “The most painful examples are the thoughtless or inappropriate use of church symbols or specific worship functions” — like an altarpiece reused as a table or a bar, for example. Ultimately, he said, it comes down to one thing: respect for the building’s former life.

Some observers, however, are sad to see churches converted to any other use, no matter how considerate the design is.

Dan Claire, rector of the Capitol Hill-based Church of the Resurrection, has been helping establish neighborhood churches for young Washingtonians around the city but has struggled to find space for the new congregations. He is not a big fan of church-to-condo conversions.

“I think it’s a catastrophic loss,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer third spaces in the city. You can go to a pub or a restaurant — you consume and you leave — but there aren’t many places where you can gather.”

But developers say that in the end, it is a matter of stewardship: They are keeping the buildings safe for another generation.

“This is a way to preserve an asset that’s deteriorating; we’re making it beautiful again,” Klein said. “We want to maintain the architecture so it can be enjoyed in perpetuity.”