Michael and current Apprentice Sophia Begg
Reading the Bible week after week in youth group showed Michael Dodd how to live for Jesus in the day-to-day. Now he is a Senior Assistant Minister at Engadine & Heathcote Anglican and an MTS Trainer who is blessed to be part of a growing legacy of entrusting the gospel to transform generations.
Michael was raised in a Christian home, where his mum and dad took him to church at St Paul’s Carlingford each week and shared the love and hope of Jesus with him. There he met Mal, his youth group leader, who helped Michael explore the Bible and take on faith in Jesus as his own.
As a young adult, Michael was impacted by his minister James Warren, who later became his MTS Trainer, and is now his Senior Minister at Engadine & Heathcote! Little did he know when James first invested in him, what long legacy he was already being impacted by.
Ministry thinking and MTS
After school, Michael went to university at UNSW, and continued to be involved at St Paul’s Carlingford. It was in these years that he began to seriously think about ministry.
Michael reflects, “St. Paul’s Carlingford had a long history of people doing MTS apprenticeships and it was a big part of our church. So I saw a lot of people older than me do apprenticeships and then we’d send them out to go to take the gospel elsewhere. So it was a big part of our church culture. And then at university as well, Campus Bible Study had a similar culture with MTS. But it was around the second year of uni, people starting encouraging me to think about what I was going to do with my life. About how I might prioritise Jesus and His Kingdom and whether full-time ministry might be an option.”
During his time at university, Michael was grown by the intentional discipling of Campus Bible Study UNSW MTS apprentice Mike Taylor, who met with Michael each week to read the Bible with him while Mike was doing his apprenticeship.
It was at the end of his fifth and final year of university that Michael decided that the time to MTS was now, not just some time down the road, having been challenged to consider that the only reason Jesus hasn’t returned yet is because God is still saving people.
Michael did his MTS apprenticeship under James Warren in 2005 and 2006 at St Paul’s Carlingford. After MTS, Michael went on to study at Moore College, worked as a youth minister for a few years, before moving to be an Assistant Minister at Engadine & Heathcote in 2012.
Conviction for the responsibility of the local church
Now, Michael has been an MTS Trainer for several years, passing on the gospel like his parents, Mal, James, and all the others who invested in him. In 2025, he is training apprentice Sophia Begg, who is in her second year.
Michael shares, “ Becoming a trainer wasn’t something I ever really opted into because MTS is something we prioritise and do in partnership together as a church. That’s the DNA that was instilled in me. Particularly by James through my MTS apprenticeship.”
At the heart of it is Jesus’ words from Matthew 9:37-38: “Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Michael says, “We pray for God to send out workers into the harvest, God answers that prayer through local churches. So my deep conviction is that as a local church we have a responsibility to be raising up workers, equipping them, training them, and sending them out with the gospel.”
As Michael himself has said, this ‘DNA’ has been passed on to him, and it has formed his own convictions and shaped his actions. The passing on of this has never been an accident, and can in fact be traced through generations.
Passing the baton on and on
Tim, Michael, James, and Col
The legacy Michael is a part of started many years ago, when Col Marshall, one of the co-founders of MTS, trained a young James Warren as an MTS apprentice. James went on to train Michael, who then trained Tim (now at Bible College).
Michael is still training new apprentices, now training Sophia, but a particular moment of being together with these four generations of people in ministry stays with him.
He shares, “Seeing possibly 30 odd years of ministry or more, all together was amazing. Just seeing the way that God worked across generations and the way he raises people up. And then thinking through how many people Col and James have trained and influenced. They have trained way more than I have! And just the number of people that have gone out from that to all kinds of different places.”
When thinking about his part in this legacy, Michael is all about the gospel.
He says, “For me legacy isn’t about me. I don’t want to be remembered. But I want our church to be a place where everyone prioritises Jesus and His Kingdom, not just those doing apprenticeships. And I want our church to be one that continues to send people out to serve in the kingdom in all kinds of different ways.”
As a trainer, Michael wants to instil passing on the gospel to all apprentices so that the legacy of the gospel continues.
He shares, “I want our MTS apprentices as they go out to be men and women who in the future will train their own apprentices and continue that work of entrusting it to future generations. The legacy we want is 2 Timothy 2:2, entrusting the gospel to faithful people who can teach it to the next generation. We want the gospel remembered, not people.”