Levi Kowalczyk is a first-year MTS apprentice doing his training in the rural Parish of Cudgegong Valley. Not only does he have a unique rural apprenticeship, he is the first MTS apprentice for the Bathurst Anglican Diocese!
As a teenager, Levi began wrestling with faith in Jesus when his family’s home caught on fire. They lived on a property in country NSW and lost almost everything. This experience made Levi question whether God can be trusted.
Levi shares, “I really wrestled with what it means to trust God and I learned that He can be trusted, that He can be depended upon.”
After this experience, Levi’s whole family, who had drifted from regular church, started being regular attenders of their local church and active Christians. This ended up changing Levi’s future in more ways than one!
Loving Jesus and His people
With his newfound trust in God, Levi settled into the local Anglican church and worked on being a faithful follower of Jesus. His minister from Rylstone-Kandos Anglican, Matthew Brooks-Lloyd, encouraged him to serve at church and really took Levi under his wing.
Levi shares, “ At first, it was volunteering with youth group. And that grew into leading prayers at church or doing Bible readings. And eventually that grew into service leading as well.”
Matthew continued to disciple Levi and encourage him, which led to Levi being given an opportunity to test ministry in a one-day-a-week youth worker role.
Levi explains, “I was in my early twenties, thinking about what I want to do with my life. Where is God taking me, and maybe there is a calling here.”
At this time, however, Matthew and his wife Cathy left Rylstone-Kandos to go pastor a church in Tasmania. But they encouraged Levi to keep taking steps, so he took the youth worker role. Levi reflects, “There was a lot of encouragement from our Bishop, Mark Calder from the Bathurst Diocese. He said to me, ‘Treat this as work, but it’s also an opportunity to discern ministry. So treat it as an opportunity to really grow and learn and depend on others for advice.’”
From 2023 and halfway into 2024, Levi did exactly this, working one day as a youth worker for church and the rest of the time as a farmhand.
It was a great experience, and one that led Levi to want to seriously train for ministry.
Trainer Josh and Levi
Ministry training when distance is great
Levi had heard about MTS, which had been recommended to him by Matthew and Cathy before they left, and so he started considering all his options. One option was to go to Sydney, where there are lots of churches training apprentices, and train there. But Levi’s heart was really in rural ministry; he saw the need and wanted to train in the country if he could. So he waited.
God answered Levi’s prayers when Tim St Quintin started at the Parish as a new rector and was eager to enable Levi to do his apprenticeship. The big challenge was the distance and size of the Parish!
Levi was a member of the Rylstone-Kandos church, which is part of the Parish of Cudgegong Valley. The Parish also includes churches in Mudgee, Gulgong, Cooyal and Windeyer, and services these towns and their surrounds. This is an area of over 140,000 hectares, which in Sydney, would be equivalent to a Parish covering from Balmain to Bondi to Maroubra across to Hurstville and up to Ashfield!
Along with Tim, who started as Rector in April 2024, another new minister was coming to the Parish, whom Tim identified as a good trainer for Levi – Josh Taylor.
Josh began as Assistant Rector in January 2025, and Levi officially began his apprenticeship too! Given the nature of rural life and the size of the parish, the trainer/apprentice rhythm is a bit different to that in a city – but it’s been a great start to the year so far.
Levi explains, “I’m based at Rylstone and Kandos, which are my hometowns. This area is the focus of my ministry. I teach SRE in both primary schools. I help run a youth group fortnightly that is about to move to weekly. I lead services quite frequently. And across the broader Parish I’ve started visiting other churches and getting to know people there.”
Since Levi is an apprentice of the Parish, not just his home church, the ability to get out and visit other sites, meet people and do ministry across the region is an important part of his training. Levi’s trainer Josh is based in Gulgong, which is around an hour’s drive from Rylstone-Kandos, where Levi is based.
Levi says, “When training with Josh, we often meet at Mudgee, which is the halfway point, and we’ll often meet with Tim, too. The three of us have weekly meetups.”
They have weekly debrief meetings and look ahead to the week to come, and then after this meeting, Levi meets one-to-one with Josh. Either they’ll go through the MTS curriculum, or simply share lunch and talk ministry and faith together.
The rest of Levi’s week is spent in formal ministry, informal one-to-one discipleship and all the various events that pop up in the church calendar. He has also been doing Cornhill Training by distance on a Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesdays, Levi still works as a farmhand. It’s important to him to keep a hand in the world that so many of the community and church members are in!
Highs and lows of rural ministry
Rural ministry has challenges that are very different to ministry in cities or more densely populated areas.
Levi shares, “Travel is a big part of it. Not only travelling to church and meetings, but also visiting people. You can drive an hour just to see someone.”
There are many wonderful aspects of rural ministry, too, like closeness of community.
He says, “There is a strong community aspect. Particularly since your ministry focus is mostly in one town. You are gonna become a familiar face. It’s been interesting moving into town, and being around and people ask what is going on with my ministry. I’ll drive around and kids I teach SRE will wave and be familiar. I’ve grown to love that.”
Levi also gets to engage more with the parents of kids and youth he’s working with, as he encounters them at work or around in the community. This has led to some fruitful conversations and kids coming to youth programs at church now too!
Rural ministry also brings the Bible to life in ways that Levi says can be hard to see if you don’t experience it.
He explains, “ There is a lot of biblical imagery coming to life and having it all around you. Which is something that’s been a strong part of my discerning a calling for ministry. Because I worked in agriculture as a farmhand before this. It’s something really powerful in this region, you see that imagery from the Bible come to life. There’s something unique about being out in creation and seeing the imagery of shepherds and sheep and vineyards come to life.”