About Kererū Publishing
Andrew Gamman and Caroline Bindon are founders of Kererū Publishing. They live amongst the Kererū on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula just to the north of Auckland city in New Zealand. Husband and wife team, they’ve worked together and separately in developing creative worship resources across many different denominations and organisations.
Andrew Gamman
Andrew has a passion for fishing, family and church – although not necessarily in that order. After a short taste of pastoral work in a Pentecostal setting, he has exercised pastoral leadership as an Accredited Minister of the Baptist Churches of New Zealand and a Presbyter in Full Connexion with the Methodist Church of New Zealand / Te Hāhi Weteriana o Aotearoa. This ministry has included church planting and theological education. Andrew loves the broad spectrum of the Christian Church with its rich diversity and traditions.
He presently writes the weekly lectionary resource, Taking Flight, for Kererū Publishing and has a strong desire to see the church engaging people in the present day by being lively, colourful and creative. His own approach has been shaped by a range of diverse activities, including being an on-air radio host, visiting field projects in Outer Mongolia with World Vision International, staying in a Hutterite community, and touring European Reformation sites with a group of Schwenkfelders.
Contact Andrew: andrew@kererupublishing.com
Caroline Bindon
While writing fiction is Caroline’s happy place, her desire to creatively engage and resource others to openly explore and discover more about their Christian faith journey has influenced both her publications and her ministry.
As a Baptist minister, in 2001, she had the opportunity to start the Avenues Church, a worshipping community she continued to lead for twenty years, exploring an alternative style of all-age worship with a small but engaged group. Her passion for experiential-based worship and multi-sensory prayer inspired the start of Kererū’s weekly 5 Senses to Prayer subscription. She also writes The Seed Disperser and seasonal subscriptions, Counting Down to Christmas and The Curiosity Journey. Her skills are often called upon to turn something ordinary into something profound as she seeks to find the story within.
When she’s not working in her day job in the construction industry, spending time with family or friends, working on Kererū Publishing projects, or one of her many other creative endeavours, she will likely be dreaming up a new plotline for a character’s story. You can keep up with her latest fictional writing projects at carolinebindon.com
Contact Caroline: caroline@kererupublishing.comm
The Story of the Kererū
Stories from a bygone era tell of the incredible sound of a flock of Kererū flying overhead, the whooshing and beating of a hundred wings impressive and deafening. These days a flock of the distinctive native New Zealand pigeon with its white vest and iridescent green feathers tinged with purple and bronze is a rare and unlikely sight. While still found in the forests and even in the city parks and gardens of Aotearoa New Zealand, Kererū are usually seen spotted alone or in pairs. They aren’t at risk but they’re certainly not plentiful.
The never-ending spiral interconnects the future of the Kererū and the forest together. Kererū are seed dispersers. They spread the seeds of native forest plants and are the only New Zealand bird large enough to eat the big fruit of the largest native trees. Without the Kererū, the lush green forest that still covers a quarter of New Zealand is also threatened and the loss of their native forest habitat means the loss of Kererū. Intentional action is needed to save the Kererū and the native forest.
The story of the Kererū is a metaphor for the church in New Zealand and in the western world. The old models of church in its many and varied forms are struggling to engage ordinary people in their Christian faith journey and the church in all its forms is a threatened species. The habitat of our society is a rapidly changing place.
Intentional action is needed to rejuvenate, reinvigorate and engage with the people in our world so that Christian meaning and purpose is accessible, relevant and central to daily living. Kererū Publishing grew out of an idea to provide online and accessible resources for people to grow strong and robust in their life and their faith.
Our dream is to provide resources to engage, encourage and inspire a generation of seed dispersers for the Christian faith and to equip groups of Christian’s together to be church in this changing world. After years of including creative ideas in our own churches and circles, people all over the world can access our resources and subscriptions, written and published in New Zealand.