By supporting Bible Society NZ you will be enabling our shared global mission to help make the Bible accessible to everyone and encourage interaction with it to continue.
Through your support, together we can help to break the cycle of Bible poverty and increase Bible engagement and literacy for people in many different contexts.
Discover how the Bible projects you support in New Zealand and around the world will address Bible Engagement, Bible Literacy, and Bible Poverty by watching the short video from Neels our CEO below.
Bible Engagement
How people read, interact, meditate, apply and respond to Scripture.
Bible Literacy
How people understand and interpret Scripture.
Bible Poverty
Availability, affordability and accessibility of Scripture in the language of the reader.
From busy city streets to war-torn overseas villages, we strive to make the Bible available and alive so that all people may experience its life-changing message.
In some parts of the world, the Bible is difficult to access or is simply unavailable. In New Zealand, the Bible is readily available but many people are unaware of its value.
We work in New Zealand and in partnership with over 150 Bible Societies around the world to address this. We take the Bible and find ways to translate and distribute it, create digital formats, advocate for its place in society, and help people relate to and make sense of it in their everyday lives.
All our efforts are driven by one conviction: we believe that when people engage with the Bible, lives can change–for good.
Annual report 2021
The Word at Work
At Bible Society, our mission is to help make the Bible accessible to everyone and encourage interaction with it. To discover how our supporters enable that to happen and the wider impact their support is having on lives in New Zealand around the world, read the latest editions of our quarterly ‘The Word at Work’ publication below.
"To make the Bible accessible to everyone and encourage interaction with it."
Find out more about us...
TRANSLATE - the Bible should be understandable to everyone
RESTORE - the Bible should be at the heart of life and service
ERADICATE - the Bible should be an agent of God's transformative power
ADVOCATE - the Bible should be lifted up in contemporary culture
DISTRIBUTE - the Bible should be accessible to everyone
Mel Bowen - a volunteer legend - about to run a marathon to raise funds for Bibles.
We can only fulfil our mission with the help of committed staff, volunteers, churches, partner organisations and supporters.
They are our lifeblood. They enable us to reach across the breadth of the church in New Zealand with the message that the Bible needs to play an important role in the Christian faith journey.
Volunteers raise funds, raise awareness and fervently pray for worldwide Bible mission. Their contribution is priceless.
Churches and partner organisations support us in achieving our mission objectives. Working together with other organisations to make the Bible available and encourage interaction with it is a key part of our strategy.
Being a charity, we rely on the generosity of many New Zealanders who provide funds for Bible mission. For generations, our supporters have made sacrifices in order for Bibles to be translated, published and distributed to those eager to hear God’s story.
Translation is at our heart
Translation remains at the heart of Bible Society work in New Zealand and around the world.
Although New Zealanders can easily access the Bible themselves, many people around the world are still waiting for the Bible in their own language. Only then can the Bible become alive and relevant in their everyday lives.
With 497 million people still without any part of Scripture in their language, there’s much work to be done. To aid the global Bible Society community in this task, we raise funds in New Zealand for translation projects all over the world. The focus of this support remains the South Pacific and Asia, where we also provide expertise in helping local communities bring the Bible into their language.
At home, we’re working with Māori Christian leaders to ensure the Bible continues to be available to a new generation of Māori speakers. We’re also looking forward to soon publishing the first ever full Bible in Tokelauan.
Bible Society New Zealand is a member of the United Bible Societies (UBS) fellowship. UBS is a global leader in Bible mission work, especially Bible translation. Globally the average annual total UBS fellowship economy is around US$384m. In 2018 Bible Societies worldwide distributed more than 38 million full Bibles and 340 million Scripture items (including full Bibles).
You can download the latest UBS Annual Report here.
More information about 2018 Bible distribution statistics is here.