Growing up in the church, Daniel Kong describes his parents as taking “Jesus and Christianity quite seriously”. This model of faith and service in ministry shaped how he understood the world from childhood.
As a teenager, several different ministry workers in his church were quite influential for him to own his faith and understand how to live it out. Daniel reflects, “As we opened the Bible together, and I heard it preached at church, I realised that I understood Jesus was my Saviour, but I didn’t understand him to be my Lord.”
Not just in part, but the whole
After school, Daniel left his home city of Melbourne to study Solar Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. He had a view that he could make the world a little better in this field. Once there, he joined the Christian group and started meeting with ministry apprentices. This discipleship helped him come to an important conclusion.
Daniel says, “I recognised Jesus as Lord of everything and everyone, and the implications were quite significant for me. It helped me realise that all of my life needed to be in submission to Jesus, not just Sundays or the part that gets me saved.”
To help him continue thinking this through, in 2004 apprentice Clive Buultjens invited him to the Club 5 Conference (a conference from the early days of MTS that encouraged people to consider vocational ministry).
At the conference, Daniel met Lionel Windsor, past MTS apprentice and current lecturer at Moore College. Lionel, who had been a Solar Engineer before pursuing ministry challenged Daniel to consider the bigger picture. Daniel recalls, “He said: ‘You might be able to help the world a bit, but in reality, only Jesus is going to truly make the world a better place.’”
So, in 2011, Daniel, with the encouragement of his pastors at Wild Street Anglican and other Christian peers, decided to do an apprenticeship himself to explore ministry. He was trained at UNSW by Carl Matthei. After his two-year apprenticeship, Daniel went on to study at Moore Theological College.
How far for the sake of the gospel
Throughout their training, Daniel and his wife, Jess, who had also done a ministry apprenticeship, were challenged to think about how far they would go for the sake of the gospel. They originally pursued overseas mission, but were encouraged to do ministry in Australia for a few years first. This led them to AFES, who sent them to Deakin University in Burwood (Melbourne) to do international student ministry.
Now, Daniel is the Campus Staff Team Leader for AFES at Deakin Uni, Burwood. In his role, he oversees and is part of training several ministry apprentices!
Deakin’s ministry is unique, as it keeps International and Domestic students together as much as possible. Daniel explains, “We’re a university in the suburbs in Melbourne, and often students don’t hang around particularly long. Some only stay for two or three years. And because of the English Language Institute connected to us, we get a lot of short-term international students coming through. This is a wonderful, evangelistic opportunity, but it’s a bit different because it’s very fast-paced.”
As a trainer, and a trainer of trainers, Daniel’s team’s philosophy is ‘everything is a training opportunity.’ This is as much for him and the team as their apprentices!
He says, “We also say every moment is an opportunity to be trained as well. So we want to not only be training our apprentices, but we also want to be trained by them.”
Ordinary, humble and learning
It’s exciting for Daniel to see how his apprentices can be humble and apply this philosophy even to themselves. This year, he’s been encouraged by second-year apprentice Alex Bui, who, when looking to improve in walk-up evangelism skills, sought out first-year apprentice Nathan Mann and asked for his help. It was a delightful surprise to see Alex seek out someone more ‘junior’ and look to learn together.
Daniel shares, “They went out and met some people, and maybe the second person they met ended up saying they were keen to find out more. So together they read the Bible, and then late last year that person became a Christian.”
These moments of God using people for his good purposes, even when they are lacking confidence or don’t seem the likely fit, are an ongoing joy for Daniel. The ordinary being impacted by the extraordinary gospel is something he sees over and over again in his ministry—and it never gets less amazing.
For Daniel, it means continuing to ask God to provide more people for the work he has given us to do. He says, “God’s desire is to raise up workers for the harvest field. He himself sent Jesus into the world to save us, and then he sent his disciples out. God takes the first step in bringing his people to himself. And so, as people with the good news, we ought to be sent and send others too.”
Supporting MTS is an act Daniel sees as a partnership in this important process. He says, “If what we’ve just said is true, that this is how God is working in the world, then partnering with this ministry is partnering with God in his work. And it’s an expression of worship to him, and it’s an alignment of our actions with his desire. What a joy and privilege that is!”
Please consider giving to our 2025 MTS Christmas Appeal to support more trainers like Daniel to raise up gospel workers and see the extraordinary message of Jesus reach the lost. Give now