Community: Whose Responsibility

By Nsumba Hilary Roberts

This book is filled with practical real-life stories and experiences. Community: Whose Responsibility will inspire you to improve on your game and encourage you to be more responsible, whether it is in the community where you live or caring for the people you share social values and responsibilities within the market place or home. Its clear goal is to help you recognize it is possible.

What a great little book! And so practical too! The principals, simply and yet profoundly laid out in it, have the power to reach people and transform community! I love the real-life stories Pastor Bob tells. They come from firsthand experience of working in the community every day. What you will find in this book is not theory but effective practice. Pick up this book, read it, digest it, and expect to become part of bringing healing to community (Gary M. Skinner, founder, Watoto Ministries).

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512761177

Nsumba Hilary Roberts

Nsumba Hilary Roberts (Pastor Bob) was born in Uganda, East Africa, and attended the School of Community Leadership, Glad Tidings Bible College, and CWR/Waverly Abbey College. He joined the ministry in 2002 and was ordained in 2007 as a Pentecostal Assemblies of God minister and has since served with Watoto Church. A trained counselor, Roberts serves in the community and passionately cares for people in vulnerable conditions. He and his wife have three children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Nsumba Hilary Roberts.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-6116-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6118-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6117-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016917396

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/6/2016

Contents

Endorsements

Dedication

Special Thanks and Acknowledgements

IntroductionIt Is Your Responsibility

Chapter 1: Caring for Community

Chapter 2: Relationships: Great Opportunities

Chapter 3: Caring for People

Chapter 4: Value People the Way God Does

Chapter 5: Costs and Rewards

Chapter 6: My Story

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Info source

Endorsements

Proof reading any work, however interesting and exciting it is, can be a gruelling task. It requires a high degree of concentration, language knowledge, time and trying to understand what the author wants to mean. When Nsumba Hilary Roberts, fondly known as Pastor Bob told me to proof read his book, I felt honored, excited and scared. Honored because ever since I got to know him, the one thing that has struck me most about him is his servant heart. In fact, I felt that though I love to serve, I can never compete with him. I felt excited as I knew that reading his book would help me get to know who he really is and what keeps on driving him to serve. I was not disappointed. I felt scared because the task seemed way beyond my abilities. As I read Community: Whose Responsibility, I was touched by the many stories of the people he has helped and is still helping. I know that these are just examples. Believe me; Pastor Bob has done more than he has put in this book. What is more, I believe that many times, we influence more people than we know. I know that everyone reading this book will be touched by it. It has touched me.

rnnabiryo

Nabiryo Nancy Rosemary

Assistant Lecturer, Language Education, Makerere University

Pastor Bob has brought together essential challenges to the way we live our lives in the community and how as Christians we have a personal responsibility to Be Responsible in our community for our friends and neighbours for the benefit of all, not just the few, no matter who we are. The principles of being responsible are relative to the whole of God’s world not just Kampala and Uganda.

Nigel Stapleton

Pastor Bob, in this book, has demonstrated that community transformation is possible and he has demostrated how it can be done – getting committed to helping one person at a time. He challenges each reader to think about what he/she can do with the little one has to the least of these. Will you take up the challenge as you read this book?

Jacqueline Opondo

Pastor Bob shows that he has his fingers directly right on the pulse of our most significant issues of today. Without understanding what these root issues are, we will lose our most precious asset, that of community. Christians of all people should be the experts at creating the loving, caring, environment that every neighborhood would want to have. This is book is contagious, and when you read it, you will be sharing this critical ideas….with of course, your neighbors!! This book comes to us at a most desperate hour. READ IT!!!

Rev. Kurt Schimke, Lecturer at the African Bible University in Lubowa; also, Director of Community at Heart Ministries in Mengo

There are opportunities everywhere around us but many of these unfortunately always go unexploited. This is either due to our attitude, lack of knowledge, pride, selfishness, laziness, etc, or because we do not take that important step to exploit them.

Pastor Bob Nsumba unveils true life issues with typical examples within our community in a very ordinary way. As a Police officer, I get particularly enthralled by chapter two of this book where he highlights the aspects of policing communities a responsibility of all. He entirely agrees with Sir Robert Peel, a two time British Prime Minister (1834-1836, and 1842 – 1846) who once said that; The Police are the Public and the Public are the Police; the Police being only members of the public who are paid to give fulltime attention to duties which are incumbently on every citizen in the interest of community welfare and existence. It is true that many people tend to think that Police is meant to inconvenience others for specific interests of a given entity (or government). Because of this mind-set, I have had colleagues, mostly Christians, asking me questions like;

How do you be a Christian and at the same time a Policeman, how do you manage?

How do you live a life like that?

Don’t you fear for your life?, etc

In fact, to many I appear a sheep in a wolf’s clothing and this I clearly read from their faces as we talk. It has not always been so easy to bring them to terms with my explanation and assuring them that this is a calling. I mean; a calling to be a Policeman…in Uganda?…….. a big question lingers in their mind vividly shown by how they move their eyes round as I labour to answer.

There are obviously many challenges, several being mentioned by the author in this book and many others. Policing is a duty chosen by those who serve, with a lot of sacrifice. The author mentions here that; it requires patience and humility to serve the community. Until one like Pastor Bob and the Church where he serves come out to openly appreciate Policemen, many have always felt unmerited. I must mention though that I am proud to be a Police Officer and blessed to be a member of watoto where I have interacted with Bob as my Pastor.

I thank Pastor Bob Nsumba for writing this book which touches the actual aspects of our community in a very realistic and simplified approach. It is very true that a lot is accomplished when we bless others. Blessing the Police particularly takes policing to another level and a multiplicity of that is reciprocated into the community and the public in a way that is beyond measure, as the blessed policemen go out to serve the nation. The returns are enormous.

I learn further from this book that it is an opportunity and our responsibility to care for