Did you know we stock the full range of New Zealand Hymnbook Trust music books and recordings?
Three of the main collections are also available as PDF eBooks – Hope Is Our Song, Faith Forever Singing, and Alleluia Aotearoa.
All CD recordings can now be purchased as zipped sets of MP3 digital audio files, giving you quick access for planning and rehearsal.
If you are preparing Advent and Christmas services, take a look at Carol Our Christmas. It includes 52 carols for a southern-hemisphere Christmas, with words, music, and guitar chords for each.
You can also order Colin Gibson’s Knowing the Song: A Companion to the Publications of the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust in print or as an eBook. Colin shares the stories behind these hymns – how they were written, the tunes they use, and the lives of the hymnwriters and composers.
Special offer
Buy all four print-edition music books together and save $10 off the usual cost of purchasing them individually.
Our standard postage charges still apply.
About the books
Carol Our Christmas
Carol Our Christmas is a distinctive collection of 52 New Zealand carols which reflect a “summer Christmas” in the Southern Hemisphere – recognising the light, sun and local rhythm of Aotearoa rather than the usual Northern-hemisphere snow imagery.
The inclusion of six Christmas poems by notable New Zealand writers (such as Joy Cowley and Eileen Duggan) and a foreword by Joy Cowley further root the collection in the local context.
The carols span the traditional nativity narrative, the wonder of incarnation, reflections on creation and community, and new-perspectives on Christmas – offering fresh imagery, humour and relevance.
For ministers and worship leaders this book offers a rich resource: it allows congregations to celebrate Christmas with carols that feel culturally and environmentally appropriate to New Zealand, supports guitar and congregational use (with chords included), and gives fresh textual material that can deepen the seasonal service beyond the familiar.
The collection is a strong asset for summer carol services for communities in the southern hemisphere, and anyone seeking to refresh the Christmas repertoire with meaningful, contextually sensitive music.
Hope Is Our Song
Hope Is Our Song is an expansive and theologically adventurous collection, gathering a wide range of contemporary New Zealand hymn writers whose work spans creation care, peace, lament, resurrection hope, global justice, and the renewing work of God in community.
The hymns have bold imagery, honest emotion, and a willingness to address modern social challenges within a framework of Christian hope.
Its language is poetic yet grounded, consistently pointing towards healing, reconciliation, and God’s transforming presence.
Ministers and worship leaders will find this book an abundant resource for shaping services that speak credibly into today’s world, invite congregational participation, and hold together beauty, justice, and faith.
Faith Forever Singing
Faith Forever Singing brings together a wide sweep of New Zealand hymn writing, offering congregations a stable backbone of liturgical and thematic material.
Its hymns consistently express gratitude, discipleship, the rhythm of the Christian seasons, and a practical faith shaped by prayer, justice, and community service.
Many texts emphasise the Spirit’s guidance, the call to follow Christ with integrity, and the need for hope in the face of human limitation.
Ministers and worship leaders will appreciate this volume for its breadth, its reliability in covering the full liturgical year, and its strong pastoral tone that supports everything from reflective services to energetic celebrations.
Alleluia Aotearoa
Alleluia Aotearoa is an inventive collection that helped shape a distinctively Aotearoa New Zealand voice for congregational song.
The hymns draw heavily on themes of community, welcome, peace-making, and daily discipleship, often weaving te reo Māori phrases, natural imagery, and an earthy sense of God’s presence in ordinary life.
Across the texts there is strong emphasis on justice, compassion, shared responsibility, and Christ walking alongside people in their struggles.
Ministers and worship leaders will value this book for its deeply local character, its accessible language, and its ability to root worship in the whenua, the neighbourhood, and the shared life of the Church in Aotearoa.
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Attention Hymnwriters and Composers
The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust has been collecting and publishing New Zealand hymns and songs for the last thirty years, beginning with “Alleluia Aotearoa” in 1993. The most recent collection, “Hope is our Song”, was produced in 2009.
New Zealand has a great reputation by now as a fresh, interesting voice in the world of Christian music, with a considerable body of hymns sung and appreciated all over the world. Shirley Erena Murray and Colin Gibson have been huge contributors to this work.
No doubt there is a whole new generation of poets and musicians out there, giving glory to God with their music for worship!
This is a preliminary call to that generation of new writers. We are keen to know what’s out there nowadays, with a view to compiling another collection. If you write hymns and songs, please make contact with us, so we can discuss further when the time comes.
Please contact Marnie Barrell marnienzht@gmail.com
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Copyright enquiries
To request permission to reproduce hymns in the NZ Hymnbook Trust’s music books and for other copyright enquiries, please email Trust manager Jonathan Berkahn jonathan@berkahn.net.nz
