Dear Sir,
I only met Bob Holman once (obituary en August), many years ago.
He was speaking on the same platform as Frank Field MP and what had attracted me was that Bob had left a high-powered professorial post at the university to reach out to the poor and needy in a rundown Bath estate.
I spent most of my early life in care and had been bussed around the country by Social Services. I ended up wandering the streets of Wolverhampton as a 17-year-old but, through the work of the church there, finally submitted my life to Jesus. A source of inspiration was David Wilkerson’s book The Cross and the Switchblade which mirrored so much of my own life.
When I read of Bob’s work, it reminded me of David Wilkerson and I felt urged to go and meet him and to support the work of Bob and his family and the church in Easterhouse. The work there will not die because of the numerous members who have come to Christ and who carry on the work that Bob, in obedience to his Lord and Saviour, initiated.
Bob had been encouraged to enter academia by Richard Titmuss, probably one of the most eminent social policy academic and government advisers this country has known and yet Bob gave up fame and a comfortable lifestyle in order to obey his Master’s command to follow him and to ‘feed my sheep’. May it be the prayer of each one of us that, like Bob, we will leave this world better than we found it.
Yours sincerely,
