Heidegger, Bonhoeffer and the Concept of Home in Christian Youth Work / Progress in Mathematics (PDF)

"I love this book: Hill's effortless prose, her bracing intellectual creativity, the theological validation she offers youth ministries-like the drop-in center she describes here--that extend Christ to young people through their actions more than words. But what won my heart were the youth themselves. For Hill has written around them more than about them, laying her words beside theirs, inviting youth to tell their own stories and letting the gospel sneak through them. You will see-as Hill does-how desperately the Church needs these youth, not to fill pews, but to encounter Christ through them as they come home to each other. Why youth ministry? This is why."

--Kenda Creasy Dean, Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA, and author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church and Delighted: What Youth Are Teaching the Church about Joy

"Phoebe Hill is a fresh and exciting new voice in practical theology and youth ministry. Hill uniquely wrestles with heavy philosophical and theological material, while placing it in direct conversation with empirical research. But Hill takes it even a step further, assisting ministers and others in practice. A Theological Vision of the Church's Work with Young People puts this all on display in the most beautiful way. This book is both weighty and welcoming at the same time. It's the rare book that can speak to philosophers and pastors equally. It's a treasure for all those who believe thinking is as important as doing in ministry with young people."

--Andrew Root, Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth Ministry, Luther Seminary, USA, and author of The End of Youth Ministry? and The Congregation in a Secular Age.

This book explores what it means to be andbecome-at-home in theological perspective, located in the context of a youth club. Drawing on ethnographic research, Phoebe Hill presents an account of what an authentic Christian hospitality could look like in a youth setting, and the ways in which the young people - the strangers at the door - might enable the Christian youth worker to become more fully at home. Discourses around Christian hospitality often unwittingly perpetuate implicit power imbalances. The youth club offers a context for Christian hospitality that 'tips' the power in favour of the young people who attend, enabling the youth leaders to share and create home with young people in a distinctive way. As young people leave the Church in droves, the Church faces the urgent and daunting task of finding new ways of being with young people on their own terms; this book offers one solution.

Hill argues that homecoming is an essential task of humanity. We are connected in this common pilgrimage and the need to find places and spaces where we can be at home. Becoming at home may be harder than ever before; numerous sociological, philosophical and theological factors are compromising our ability to dwell in the contemporary world.