We provide a mail order book service for churches, clergy, worship leaders, musicians and church members. We can supply books published in New Zealand and overseas.
We distribute the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust’s print and PDF music books, and their CD and digital recordings: https://philipgarsidebooks.com/collections/nz-hymnbook-trust
Publishing Service:
Our current focus is on publishing New Zealand books of worship and other resources by New Zealand authors that support customers’ ministries.
In the past we have published non-fiction print books, on progressive/liberal Christian, social justice/history and pacifist topics.
We publish Print books and eBooks which we also list for sale on major online stores around the world.
There are more details about our publishing process here:
https://philipgarsidebooks.com/pages/publish-your-book-with-us
Uncover the complexities of cross-cultural relations within church congregations in the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. This book of practical and public theology arises from generous cultural insight, solid sociological and theological research, and the wisdom born of personal involvement. It shows how congregations can navigate the delicate balance of unity and diversity.
This poetic journey through the seasons in Aotearoa New Zealand, is a rich tapestry of poetic expressions, prayers, & reflections that invite readers to appreciate the sacred in ordinary moments and actively participate in the shared drama of life.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the external pressures of too much information, too many conflicting voices and too much media noise? You are not alone. This book will help you discover your inner sacred self. The breathing exercises, poems, prayers and reflections offered by Ian Kilgour will re-connect you with the Divine Presence, the source of your life and all that is.
The Southland Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand was formed in 1860. It merged with four other presbyteries in the south of the South Island to form the Southern Presbytery in 2010. This book records the key people and events that took place during these 150 years. The book details how the leadership of Presbytery supported parishes to restructure and remain viable.
Read about Marg Schrader’s remarkable, rich and varied life responding to God's call. In 1995 Marg served as Moderator of the NZ Presbyterian Church. She has also been a parish minister, director of Marriage Guidance, spiritual director, co-leader of The Still Point Community, and the mother of 8 children. Throughout her life, Marg has spread God's love in ever-widening circles.
Lay preachers, clergy and worship leaders, are you looking for new prayers and liturgy to refresh your worship and engage your congregations? Do you want worship-tested liturgy that honours southern hemisphere seasons? Does your congregation enjoy responsive prayers? Then this extensive collection of new material by a longstanding New Zealand Lay Preacher is just what you need.
A collection of liturgy resources for the season of Advent and Christmas in Aotearoa NZ, where Christmas comes in summertime. The prayers, affirmations, reflections, and blessings are in inclusive language, with an emphasis on “faith not belief” and social justice. This book is ideal for progressive and liberal faith communities and churches.
Do you wonder why women are treated as they are? Young University student Faith meets her woman minister friend for coffee fortnightly. They delve into the diverse stories of women in the Bible, and study women’s leadership and ministry experiences. Faith discovers the quiet sound of her own inner voice and begins the journey of knowing how to be woman in the world.
Based on interviews with churchgoers from Presbyterian, Anglican and Catholic congregations, clergy and spiritual directors, this challenging and inspirational book explores the experiences of Christians in midlife and considers ways that churches can support people in this life stage. Questions for reflection and discussion are included.
Are you tired of living your life in fear, always worried you don’t have enough time or energy to do what you have to do, let alone what you want to do? Long-time coach and healer Jansie Bond takes readers on a colourful bus ride from fear to love, teaching them how to find their inner power and rebuild their lives from within.
Any ending of a ministry involves a unique and complex mix of grief for all involved. Moving On is full of good advice and personal stories about a wide range of ministry transitions. Ministers and lay church leadership teams will find in this book practical guidance to help them work through ministry changes with honesty and good grace.
New Zealand Methodist Lay Preacher and community group leader, Rosalie Sugrue, shares the knowledge and distils the experiences she has gained over a lifetime of church and community engagement. This eBook ‘boxed set’ brings together in one convenient and comprehensive volume, 720 pages worth of practical materials.
This updated and expanded 3rd edition of Theme Scheme offers you a wealth of creative ideas, activities, games, plays and quizzes to help plan, organise and lead your group’s programmes. All are fun and practical, requiring minimal equipment, resources and time to prepare.
Does your church or community group want to get involved in caring for creation but don’t know where to start? The contributors to this book explore the issues, share their personal visions, and offer practical ideas that your church or group can act on today. The book documents the emergence of a dynamic mission movement, and builds that movement with practical, creative ideas and resources.
Meet Charity; young, lesbian, Christian, in a happy relationship with Katy and disturbed by her church’s attitude to LGBTQI people. Supported by her minister, Charity shares her experiences, and gains new confidence about her identity and role in her local church. She learns that interpretations of key Bible texts about gay people don’t cover loving committed adult same sex relationships.
Are you looking for fresh, original hymn lyrics and liturgy for your church? Would you like to celebrate diverse ways of being fully human in a loving faith community? Then these 42 hymns, 70 gatherings, affirmations, and blessings; along with poems & reflections, will provide a valuable resource to support your worship ministry.
Do you feel there is more to Christian faith than is told on Sundays? Are you questioning whether the firmly held beliefs you grew up with are going to be useful in the next stage of your life? Don’t panic! You have simply reached a transition point in your faith journey. Hope and her minister/mentor Susan chat about deepening & re-enchanting faith at their local café. What will Hope do next?
The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust has worked faithfully to make the best contemporary, local hymns available to churches and choirs in our country.
Their key music books are all still popular and remain in print today. Colin Gibson, tells the stories of how the hymns in these books came to be written and of the tunes to which they have been set, alongside biographies of the hymnwriters & composers.
Pasifika people are at a crossroads & must decide whether to retain their traditional cultural values and practices, adopt those of other New Zealanders or find a middle pathway to the future. Ruby explores why they are under pressure and suggests ways to deal with this. She says that Aotearoa should have a written constitution that acknowledges the tenets of all faiths, cultures and ethnicities.
Lay preacher Rosalie Sugrue’s 14 short plays and meditations are ideal to present in church. They encourage us to engage with Bible and historical characters and explore important themes. Staging is simple. Few props or costumes are required. Most work best with a combination of children and adults.
This book has everything you need to plan and create a wedding ceremony and celebration that is right for you.
The authors have many years’ experience of offering couples a multi-choice format upon which to construct their marriage ceremony.
You can find templates for: Christian and secular weddings, te reo Māori ceremonies, same-sex weddings, and others.
Trish’s collection of later-life writings integrates deep Christian spiritual experiences of God with sometimes unorthodox thinking on many aspects of love, life, interfaith, race & social issues, and sciences.
Cartoons are Jim’s church. In the process of creating these 120 cartoons over the last decade for magazines, billboards and online spaces, he has encountered life’s meaning as he’s made readers laugh – and touched a few nerves along the way. This book shows the need for cartoons that reveal truth and make us laugh is as vital as it has ever been.
Rev Siosifa Pole highlights Tongan cultural and social concepts and explores how they relate to his experience as a minister in English language, New Zealand parish settings. He hopes the book will improve the understanding by other people of the Tongan way of thinking and of doing things.
What is life like for aid workers who gather from around the world to serve refugees who have fled their homes due to famine, political unrest, and disasters?
Kiwi nurse-midwife, Barbara Walker – who spent 20 years working for international aid agencies – shares her dramatic, heart-rending, and inspiring stories of the situations she faced and the people she sought to help.
A practical book for people who are grieving, for people who want to support them as they undertake the painful journey of grief, and for anyone who wants to reflect on their own experiences of loss. Hendery gives you permission to work through your grief in the ways, and at the times, that are helpful to you.He explores disenfranchised grief when we are denied the right to grieve our losses.
How did Norman Lesser, a boy from a terrace house in Liverpool, become the Archbishop of New Zealand?
The answer lies in sheer native ability, great energy, a talent for leadership, a happy outlook on life and a bit of luck – or if you prefer, the Grace of God.
Read about his life and ministries England, Kenya & New Zealand. He started & rebuilt Napier Cathedral in his time as Bishop of Waiapu.
Does your church or community group want to help refugees or migrants settle into your neighbourhood but you’re not sure how to start?
Nick Regnault shares the experiences of his community at South West Baptist Church in Christchurch who are doing just that.
Their work is about ordinary people reaching out hands of friendship towards each other – to build bridges and to make peace.
Clergy and lay people engaged in Christian mission and parish ministry today are invited to take time out to think about what we can learn from our recent past.
You will be encouraged by Ferguson’s uplifting, inspiring and pragmatic insights gained from 50 years of ministry.
He shows how local ministry is informed by sustained theological reflection.
Psalms are about real human life, full of feelings. They sing about fears, fights and celebrations, and bring it all to God. Psalms teach us how to pray, in the hard times and the good times, in church and alone and with the people we love. I hope that my versions ring true with each original Psalm and also translate ancient words and mind-pictures into images to which children can relate.
Rediscover these characters as spirited, wise women of passion and compassion.
This easy-to-use book has strong feminist imagery and references focused on women of the Bible. Updated and expanded, it now provides reflections on Tamar, Dinah, Naomi, Michal, Vashti, Jephthah’s Daughter, Lenna Button, Susanna Wesley and Ann Turner to use in church during the sermon slot. Includes prayers & dialogues
Worship leaders, this engaging collection of prayers will support your work of creating meaningful services that reflect the church year in our part of the world.
Joy provides prayers for many different purposes: Gathering – Candle lighting – Thanksgiving – Intercession – Petition – Confession – Assurance – Illumination – Offering – Blessing – Commissioning.
This book will help you face your own death with courage and faith.
It includes readings and meditations from a wide range of perspectives and faith traditions. Dip into the book where and when you want.
There are many prompts for you to write in a notebook or journal your reflections and memories of significant people, places and events in your life, and ideas for your funeral.
Would you like a simple, quick way to engage with the RCL Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel readings for each Sunday and other important days in the church calendar? These short introductions to each Bible reading will get you started. Use the entries in this book as a preface the Bible reading in a service, as sermon sparks, for personal devotions and in your church bulletin. Full Scripture Index
Discover a prayer to cover every aspect of rural life. Anglican priest, Bill Bennett understands the complexity of rural life with its overlapping communities and its deep dependence on seasonal life. His 117 prayers are arranged into broad themes: the seasons, environment, community, mission and ministry, work, crisis and loss. Also includes 6 Eucharist and 5 general liturgies.
Powerful stories of Christian social service.
Journey with deacon Shirley-Joy Barrow as she shares her inspiring story of being City Missioner in Whanganui from 2004 to 2011.
Working together, her team found that they could achieve much more than their individual skills and capabilities led them to expect. They developed effective ways to respond to the people on the margins of society.
Do you want to learn how to preach and lead worship, but don’t know where to start? This practical guide by experienced Methodist Lay Preacher Rosalie Sugrue will get you going.
“This book is just what New Zealand churches need to support the emerging lay leadership in worship services.” John Thornley, Lay Preacher, Palmerston North.
Church folk often take ourselves too seriously. Jim’s warm-hearted, but edgy, cartoons help us to see the funny side of church life. No one is spared – clergy, organists, parishioners – all get a gentle prod. Good, thought-filled fun, well balanced between the trite and the bite of cartooning humour.
This collection gathers more than 100 of Jim’s best tech cartoons and his written thoughts on his experiences communicating about technology as it’s evolved over the last crazy, game-changing decade. Get it before it’s all obsolete!
How do we each define our own intimate culture? How do we know where we belong? Daughter of New Zealand Baptist missionaries, Patricia Booth was born in north-east India during World War Two. In recording her childhood memories, she has pondered on the various cultural influences she experienced. How have they shaped her understanding of who she is and where she belongs as she enters old age?
This essay on rural ministry reflects on its long evolution, its current challenges, and its continuing viability for the future in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Bennett highlights key issues and opportunities for rural ministry today.
Meg’s poems flow from her deep faith and a longing for a peaceful world.
Poems in the first half of the book, Light of the World, are a retelling of the story of Jesus’ life. 13 poems focus on Peace. Also includes a section of Tributes to family members and other people, poems about nature and a set of happy haiku.
Use these poems in worship services, for devotions and for personal inspiration.
Spurred on by the death of their first child, courageous young Scots Irish couple William and Jeanie Wallace go on the adventure of their lives to settle in 1860s New Zealand.
Follow three generations of the Wallace family from rural Ireland during the potato famine, to Scottish mining towns and on to eventual hard-won prosperity in New Zealand.
The 71 songs in this book started out as responses to The Psalms but Mark soon found himself wandering to all sorts of places, the Psalms being good jump-off points. The songs are numbered instead of having titles, in the hope that this leaves a degree of open-ended-ness, so that God can say to you what you need to hear. Dip into them at random. May there be a few holy surprises here for you.
How is religious faith affected by our life’s experiences? NZ’s Trish McBride started with a traditional Christian faith. This has evolved into a belief in a God who is free of denominational church boundaries. One poem and prose step at a time, Trish weaves the scattered patches of her life into a compelling narrative that will touch your heart, and invite you to ponder your own faith journey.
When sexual abuse of adults by clergy and spiritual leaders comes to light, religious institutions need robust procedures in place to deal with offenders and support victims.
Based on her long experience in ministry working with sexual offenders and their victims, and the training she has undertaken, Anne Stephenson shares the wisdom she has gained.
What was life like for a Tongan migrant in New Zealand in the 1970s and onwards?
In this tribute to Sione Tavo Manukia, his daughter Ruby tells of his early life in Tonga and his experiences in New Zealand, as he sought a prosperous life and further education for his children. He helped to found the Pulela’a New Lynn Tongan Methodist Church.
Green, Ho! is an extended version of Greens and Greys that adds another dimension in the form of hidden disability.
Journey with Molly Sinclair through her 1950s childhood on the West Coast, her move to Christchurch for teacher training, drama-filled OE in the UK and Europe, and as she returns to NZ in the mid-1960s. This engaging tale sweeps us along as she meets unexpected joys and setbacks.
Severe earthquakes struck Christchurch in 2010–2011. For many people, the city and life they knew has gone, but they are not yet able to move forward – they are stuck in-between. In this moving collection of psalms, poems and haiku, Methodist minister Mark Gibson tells their story.
Journey with Molly Sinclair through her 1950s childhood on the West Coast, her move to Christchurch for teacher training, drama-filled OE in the UK and Europe, and as she returns to New Zealand in the mid-1960s. This engaging coming-of-age tale sweeps us along as she meets unexpected joys and overcomes life’s setbacks.
Do you feel tired, stressed, over busy? Does the world around you seem dull and flat? Pause and let these 57 full colour photographs with simple words boost your spirit. Photographer Alexander Garside helps us to see the world through fresh eyes, and to appreciate the beauty of nature and our urban landscape. There is joy, light and life all around us.
Are you a new preacher who wants to build confidence in writing and delivering sermons? Or have you been preaching for a while and are looking for new ideas and techniques to keep your sermons fresh and your congregation engaged? These 62 creative sermons, written by New Zealand Methodist Lay Preacher Philip Garside, will provide just the input you need.