Rohan Blandford first encountered MTS like many do; his church had ministry apprentices on staff. Over his years growing up in church, he saw people do apprenticeships, but didn’t know much about the organisation involved in enabling them until he worked on staff at church and stumbled across a role at MTS Head Office.
Rohan shares, “I was doing communications work for Christ Church St Ives. We happened to be posting a job ad on Sydney Anglicans that I was checking had gone online correctly, when I saw a role advertised at MTS.”
Before starting work at Christ Church St Ives in 2023, Rohan had been studying at Macquarie University and was heavily involved in campus ministry. Another place he encountered apprentices.
He says, “I saw the job and thought ‘why not apply’. I didn’t know much, I knew MTS was an organisation. But I knew apprentices and I thought it was important.”
So Rohan applied, and in July 2024, he began work for MTS as Operations & Support Administrator. Now, not only does he know a lot about what MTS does, he’s even more convinced of the movement’s vision and mission!
Supporting an important movement
In his role, Rohan is involved in the ‘inward’ work of MTS. In the MTS world, we call this ‘Trellis work’!
In the book Trellis and the Vine it explains:
All Christian ministry is a mixture of trellis and vine.
There is vine work: the prayerful preaching and teaching of the word of God to see people converted and grow to maturity as disciples of Christ. Vine work is the Great Commission.
And there is trellis work: creating and maintaining the physical and organisational structures and programs that support vine work and its growth.
Rohan spends a lot of his time in important trellis work, supporting scholarship apprentices and their trainers with the systems and admin to ensure they can raise funds effectively and get paid. This work is designed to take the admin burden away from churches and trainers, and enable them to focus on the important work of training their apprentices.
The other half of his time is spent doing needed operational support for MTS itself, especially in support raising systems and reporting.
Rohan says, “Having a more internal-facing role means none of it is necessarily visible, but really a lot of what I do is about making things smooth and more efficient so that we can do more of what’s important and not just urgent.”
Rohan’s hope is that the work he does for MTS Head Office will continue to free up more time for their mission to raise up, train and resource MTS Trainers, as they multiply Gospel Workers through ministry apprenticeships. This isn’t just work to him, but something he is personally invested in, too.
He shares, “It’s important. I really value the work MTS does, not just because I do it and want it to be meaningful, but also because I want to do an apprenticeship myself in the next few years.”
As Rohan supports trainers, apprentices and the MTS team, Rohan gets to experience a legacy he hopes to be part of too.
He explains, “ I can see all the work that’s put into supporting trainers and apprentices on this end. And there’s the added appreciation of, God willing, if I do an apprenticeship, that’s what will be done for me as well.”
The need to continue the legacy
Rohan sees how the movement of MTS needs to keep growing in order to fulfil what Christ asked of his people in Matthew 9:37-38:
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Rohan shares, “ Even just by the numbers, as the population grows, we’ll want more workers as our current workers grow old. As it stands, we probably already need more workers. At the end of the day, we could be in this for one more week,and Jesus will come back, or we could be in it for another thousand, 10,000 years. And if we are here for 10,000 years, we need the workers to still be there.”
This is exactly the work MTS is doing: equipping ministry trainers to be effective in raising up new gospel workers and training them for the needs of the harvest.
Rohan says, “MTS is about winning the world for Christ, and the best way we see it being done is through raising up gospel workers for the harvest! And at MTS Head Office, we’re in a position to make that step into vocational ministry as useful and easy as possible, and support many trainers and apprentices as they do so. And that is worth being a part of.”