McSweeny Family

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

The season has suddenly arrived, like always. I think mankind is the only creature that actually increases its activity, while the rest of nature is resting for the winter. The first snow arrived a few days ago, so we are feeling the arrival of winter weather.

Thank you for praying for our open house, I know it has been a while back. We distributed over 1,000 flyers in the immediate neighborhood (within 1km.). We were very surprised that so many people live in the neighborhood. We invited them to our open house, to our Christmas service, and also gave them a Christmas-themed bookmark. When the day arrived, it looked like nobody would come, but then one lady entered the church to “escape” from a homeless man who was following her. We then had two other ladies arrive, and finally the homeless man! We had great conversations with each of them, and were able to give the man some parting gifts to keep him warm and filled. We feel the day was a huge success for two reasons: we told over 1,000 people we are here and gave them a hearty opportunity to get to know us. Secondly, one of the ladies is now a part of our church. We are very happy to have locals in the church, since our desire is to bless our community.

Otherwise, the church is going very well. We continue to have visitors every week and the word is getting out that we are here. Last week we had a family visit us because we are now on one of the church lists for the city of Frankfurt. We also have our first convert! The Lord touched his life shortly after his first visit with us, and he cannot get enough of the Lord now! That is a very encouraging event, and also shows the power of God’s Word to change people.

Thanks also for praying for Linda’s CD project. She was finally able to do the vocals after canceling the appointment 3 times due to sickness. The week she did them was literally the last opportunity before the baby arrives. The CD is not totally finished, but hopefully will be by early January.

There is a family close to us that is very dear to us, who need lots of prayer. Our landlady is older and will be going into surgery the day after Christmas for a brain tumor. She also has a disease where her organs do not stop growing. Her daughter (somewhere in age between Linda and I) is a single mom who has become somewhat bitter and disappointed in life. She has a daughter in her early teens whom we unofficially “adopted” in order to give her a break from her difficult home life. The whole family needs a lot of love and grace, and they need the Lord. Please pray for them. Linda and I felt from the very beginning that we need to minister to them in a special way.

Here are some specific prayer requests:

1) Please pray for direction and vision for the church. Now that there is some momentum there are things to do, people to minister to, and decisions to make. Pray also that I would be able to set my priorities right and spend the quality and quantity time to give to the church. Lately my thoughts have been scattered into a zillion different directions.

2) Pray for our landlady who is having surgery the day after Christmas. It is a very serious surgery and she has already exceeded the average lifespan. We have shared Jesus with her many times, and the most important thing is a spiritual healing.

3) Pray for God’s grace and peace for the landlady’s family. They need a touch from the Lord. Pray that we would be able to minister to them better.

Thank you for all your prayers and support. Merry Christmas!

Thank you for praying for our first service, it was a tremendous success! We were completely packed, with people overflowing into the parking space behind the church room. We had to open the back windows so they might be able to hear! We were expecting a full house and were not disappointed. We had a lot of first-time guests there, simply to celebrate the day with us. There were several families who came out from Siegen, and some of our direct neighbors also showed up. We had a great time of worship and then Pastor Nick from Siegen shared from God’s Word. I then shared a little bit from Solomon’s temple dedication speech. Lastly, Nick and some elders prayed for us and blessed the church. Afterwards we had a potluck with freshly grilled Bratwurst. I am so thankful for all God’s faithfulness in putting this all together.

Now that a few weeks have passed, things have settled down a lot. We have been reduced to our normal crowd, but we get a steady trickle of guests. We also have a couple of new people in the church who are now part of our “regulars.” The church is turning into a regular family, and Linda and I are very thankful for all that God is doing. One new person is from the village next door, so he is our “local.” We are praying for more people to come from the surrounding area and for ways to reach them.

Speaking of reaching out to our neighborhood, our next church project is an open house. Our main goal is to formally introduce ourselves to the immediate neighborhood and provide them with an opportunity to briefly stop be and see us. We feel it would be a good thing for us to reach out to them and what they choose to do with that is their responsibility. Our open house will be on Saturday, November 5th. We will deliver flyers into the mailboxes one week before. Please pray for this because there is still a lot of work to be done, there is a lot of spiritual warfare involved, and we want the Lord to bless the day.

Linda’s CD project is coming along well, but it had to be put on hold because Linda has been sick for several months now. First came the usual sickness from the pregnancy, but now she has been battling a cold for a long time and so far it isn’t getting better.

Life is balanced with many joys and sorrows, and ministry is no different. Not only do we have the privilege of rejoicing with people who are happy, but also for praying for people in need. The son of one of our core couples has been diagnosed with leukemia and he is very much on our minds and in our prayers. He is 3 years old and his name is Johann. Please continue to pray for him and the family. So far Johann is responding well to the treatment and the doctor’s are very optimistic. The parents are trusting the Lord but they have a lot on their minds at the moment.

We would appreciate prayer for the following things:

1) Please pray for the church, that God would direct us into His will. Pray that we would come closer to each other as a church family, and closer to the Lord. Pray for wisdom on how to move forward.

2) Pray for the planned open house on November 5th, that God would prompt many people to come out. Pray that He would keep away any troublemakers or people who would want to hinder the work. Pray for a good relationship with our neighbors.

3) Pray for Linda’s health, since she has been sick for quite some time.

4) Pray for Johann, that God would completely heal him and bless his family. The whole family is going through a lot at the moment.

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Marc & Linda

Dear friends and friends,

We have been hard at work renovating the building and getting it ready for use. We had to take down the old wallpaper due to the stench, smoothen up the walls, and place new wallpaper on them. Then came painting and sealing the grout on the tile. We also replaced the ceiling tiles because of the smell. The good news, the smell is gone, the bad news is, there is still much work to be done. We still need to paint the color accents, install 2 hanging bar tables, and set up the kitchen area for the coffee bar.

This has been an exciting and trying time for us and the whole church. Everybody is pitching in to help, despite their busy schedules. However, we are noticing the spiritual warfare and the toll the renovations are taking. Please pray for us as it seems we all are going through stressful times, even without the church opening.

Speaking of church opening, our doors will open for our first church service on September 11th (no political statement intended!). Please pray that the final work would be completed. We have had to significantly scale back our plans for the day. We had planned on having an open house event on the Saturday before the opening service, but we will have to postpone it for a few weeks. We are simply going to invite our close neighbors and friends to the service, and then build on that.

On a different subject matter, Linda is making her own music CD! Over the past few years she has written some wonderful songs and arranged them to music, and starting next week she will be actively working to produce it. She is very gifted in this area and it has been a pleasure for me to hear her practicing in the home (it adds such a nice ambient effect). Since we are producing it independently, we have to finance it out of our own pockets. We had already booked the studio well in advance of our plans for the church, so this adds to the stress of our church plans.

We would appreciate prayer for the following requests:

1) Please pray for our opening service on September 11th. Pray that our neighbors and close friends will be able to attend, and that the atmosphere would be good. Pray for all the preparations that need to be done for that day.

2) Pray for strength for Linda and I, as well as for the whole church. We are all burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. We are learning more and more about resting in the Lord and committing our plans to Him, but we have much more to learn. We are often worn out and discouraged with the work that needs to be done.

3) Pray for Linda’s music CD project, that God would bless it. We have invested a lot of money into it and it would be nice for it not to go to waste. Pray that the songs would be arranged, recorded, and mixed well. Pray also for all those who are helping, from the other musicians to the studio people. Most importantly, pray that GOD would be glorified, and that the music would bless His heart.

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Marc & Linda

Dear friends and family,

It’s official, we have rented our first church building! As of mid-July, we are renting the small store-front location just below where we live. The front part of the room has enough space to put some 30 chairs, and there is a small back portion that can be used as a coffee bar. When things get real crowded, we could probably squeeze in 50 chairs. There is no separate space for the children, so they will continue to meet in our apartment above, where my sermon is wirelessly streamed for the parents.

We felt it was so clear that this was from the Lord, and He just placed it into our lap. We are getting a good deal for it and we don’t even have to pay a deposit! This is a good thing because we didn’t have the money. Best if all, we are now visible to the public and this will bring lots of attention, both good and bad.

We have another praise report: someone donated 50 designer chairs made in Italy! This is one major obstacle out of the way.

We have a lot of work before us in getting the room ready and getting our thoughts together for our first church service in it. After measuring it and making a room plan, we saw that there won’t fit as much stuff as we had hoped. We will need wisdom on how to arrange everything. The renters before us not only cooked and smoked in the room, they secretly lived inside it for 6 months, which means they couldn’t be so “open” about opening the windows. Needless to say, the room stinks terribly even after airing it out daily, so we will be renovating an otherwise neat and clean room. This Thursday we will be tearing down the wallpaper. Fun, fun!

As you can imagine, not everything will always be fun and happy. This is an important step for our small group, one which leads to direct contact with the public. Living above the church gives me a unique ability to hear people’s comments about it and most of it I cannot repeat here. I am also feeling the weight of responsibility and the spiritual warfare that goes along with it. I ask you earnestly to please pray for us; we need it. Here are some specific requests:

1) Pray for unity in the group as we move forward and also make practical decisions. I am slowly realizing that these are all areas that could cause potential conflict.

2) Please pray for me, that God would empower and protect me, and that I would learn even more to give Him my burdens. I am approaching the end of my abilities and I realize that my strength is not enough. I am feeling a growing sense of responsibility and spiritual warfare.

3) Please pray for all the practical work to be done, that God would lead us. We have many renovations to make and hope that the room will be cozy and that we can make the best use of our space.

4) Pray that God would give us grace with our neighbors. We are contemplating how to reach out to the neighborhood and how to inform people we are here.

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Marc & Linda

Dear friends and family,

We have exciting news to report! On April 3rd we celebrated our first Sunday church service at our place! We had a full house with about 30 people including children. Linda’s family came down to support us and we had a few other visitors to make the day very special. I finished up the series about the Letters to the Seven Churches which I had started a while back when we had our Saturday fellowships. Linda and I celebrated the morning over brunch and the day turned out to be very memorable. Right now we are going through the book of Acts.

This is a whole new chapter in our lives. We are committing to weekly Sunday services and also to all else that may come with it, good or bad. Of course the end goal is not to simply have nice Bible Study at our place, but to expand and grow as a church, and make an impact in our surrounding community. There will surely be many blessings, trials, spiritual attacks, and new responsibilities. We ask for your prayers that God would keep us spiritually and physically fit, and that we may adjust to our new schedule.

At this point we are going to just continue with our Sunday services and see who the regulars are. We had quite a shock on the first day since every place was filled – no room even for standing! We know not everyone will commit but we already have a good core of solid people. We are also praying for opportunities for outreach.

We are very blessed to have a solid core of people to start with. As I look back at the events of the last few weeks, I am blessed by the fact that God has provided for everything for our church plant. I don’t have to find a translator because I am teaching in German and Linda is doing worship. We also have a couple of other people who can play worship when needed. I have a couple solid guys who are definitely elder material, and when I go on vacation in a few weeks, I will have someone “in-house” to preach. For children’s ministry, we have converted our home office into a children’s ministry room. We made it “child-friendly” and we are streaming my sermon into the room. We have confidence that God will provide all that we need in the coming months and years.

We would appreciate prayer for the following things:

1) Strength for our daily lives and for the ministry. We are enjoying this new direction in our lives but notice a definite decrease in time and energy. We need to stay focused on the important things. We also need prayer for our personal lives, that we would be able to better manage our time.
2) Please pray for the church, that it would grow spiritually and in numbers. We have been having a fairly steady flow of visitors and we want to be able to serve them better. We have room for more, and our vision is to impact more people.
3) Please pray for a couple of ladies who are no longer regularly attending. One of them is in a mental health clinic for several months and the other is overwhelmed with her day-care job. They have been with us from the start and we would love to have them back more often. Pray that the Lord would touch their lives.
4) Please pray for the possibility to rent out a room below us for the church. It is bigger than our living room not much bigger, and would cost several hundreds of Euros a month. We just need wisdom if it is the right time to rent and if this the right place for us. What makes this complicated is that fact that it would be better to form a private organization (corporation), which involves a lot of things.

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Marc & Linda

Greetings from Germany!

The winter snow has all melted (causing floods) and now spring is trying to break through. I love spring! The flowers start blooming, the grass turns a beautiful shade of fresh green, and we make our annual pilgrimage to purchase flowers for our patio. It is a new year and the Lord is doing new things!

I recently was able to celebrate my 40th birthday! I cannot believe I am 40! All things considered, I am feeling well and I am still young at heart. I am so glad I am taking this well. I thought I would be sad or fall into some kind of mid-life crisis, but instead I feel as if I have accomplished something. To celebrate, I threw a party at our place and invited over 50 people, with something like 35 in attendance. I felt greatly honored to have many of my friends there.

We have some exciting things to report on our home fellowship. After much prayer and discussion, we are ready to take things to the “next step” and start meeting weekly on Sundays. We were praying a while back for wisdom and direction (thanks for praying for us!) and we were basically faced with 2 options: to continue our Saturday fellowships which meet once a month, or rent a room/building and begin “officially” to meet as a church. We had this “either-or” mentality and both of them didn’t seem to be the way. For one, I was getting tired of our Saturday fellowships. The Lord used them for a time as a means of keeping the group together, but Saturdays are difficult days to get people to commit to. Sundays are the usual days to go to church, and we didn’t want a Saturday social club but we want to focus on people who would respond to meeting on Sundays. I also need to be stretched more and have something more regular. On the other hand, we don’t feel renting a room or building is what the Lord has for us at this time. In fact, we had many ideas on where we could meet but the Lord has closed every one of those doors.

The Lord then ministered to me that we could just continue or home fellowship at our place, but meet weekly on Sundays. This would get us all in a weekly Sunday church mode and we could still keep our eyes open for a room to meet in. Our desire of course is to one day have our own place and be an “official” church, but we feel this is a good short-term solution. We will be meeting on Sunday afternoons starting on April 3rd. Please keep our “first” church service in prayer, as well as for the continued direction of the church plant.

I wanted to quickly update you on our “staff” situation. The Ditthardt family who has moved here is a great blessing to us and the work here. They took a huge step of faith to come here and as a consequence they are not doing well financially. They could use continued prayer for their needs as they have a large family and have some lingering financial issues from their time in Siegen. The Lord recently did a great last minute miracle in helping them but they would like continued prayer. Their situation is still not completely solved.

Thanks also for praying for direction for Christoph and Judith Demmer. As you may know, we have been praying for them to come out and help us for a long time, and they have been praying, too. To make a long story short, the Lord opened a great door for Judith to take a permanent teaching position in the Siegen area. However, they have committed to continue helping us and we are happy that the Lord is taking such great care of them and that they still will be helping us when they can.

We would appreciate prayer for the following:

1) Please pray for our new weekly Sunday meetings which start April 3rd. Pray that we would all be spiritually ready for them and that the Lord would bless.

2) Pray for the Ditthardt family who are helping us, that the Lord would increase their faith and also provide for them. They are going through some financial difficulties.

3) Pray for wisdom in general for the whole church plant. We need wisdom for many decisions such as child care, when to form a legal entity, and how we are to proceed as a small church.

4) Pray for strength for our personal lives and for our marriage. LIfe is very demanding and there is often very little strength left at the end of the day. Pray that we can order our private lives right, and for the Lord to bless us in that area.

We are truly grateful for all your prayers and support. We feel very blessed to have you all behind us!

Greetings from Germany! Winter has hit us full speed and Christmas is just around the corner. I went from sweeping the dead leaves to shoveling snow in a very short period of time. Fortunately we are well prepared for the holidays, and I am getting used to the snow.

The last few months have been very busy, so I will get down to business:

On a personal note, in late September we (Linda, I , and her family) went on a trip together in Tuscany . It was her mom’s 50th birthday and she wanted to celebrate it with her family there. This is the second time we have been to the place and we had a great, relaxing time. The Italian family there is very nice and cooked a huge birthday meal for us all. I mention this because God has blessed me so much with a family out here that knows Him. I miss my family and friends in the States of course, but whatever I have “given up” for the Lord in coming to Germany, He has blessed me many times over. I continue to see His provision in giving me a firm place for my feet.

In late October I had to make an emergency visit to the States to see my aunt who lives in the Philadelphia area. She has been battling cancer for several years and I wanted to visit her one last time before she passes away. It was great to see her and the family, but sad to have to say goodbye. When I was younger I think I didn’t value family as I should have, but maybe that is just the typical attitude of youth. One thing is for certain, we are all getting older and life is very short. She passed away on December 2nd.

We have some exciting news to report. The Ditthardt family from Siegen has moved to the Frankfurt area to help us with the church plant. God totally did the whole thing. This is a perfect example of God just doing something without our asking because He knows what is best for us. We didn’t even know them before but God clearly has spoken to their hearts and has already opened a lot of doors for them to come here. They are an older (older than us at least!) married couple with 4 kids. They love the Lord, are a good stable family, and are eager to serve. We have been meeting with them weekly for dinner and prayer, where we are also getting to know each other. They are great people and we are blessed to have them with us. God has given us such a unity together and I am looking forward to serving with them.

Another married couple, the Demmer family, is also praying to join us. I may have mentioned them a while back, but they are friends of ours in Siegen. We asked them previously if they would join us, and the Lord clearly led them to stay in Siegen. However, they are still a regular part of our fellowship and they are still praying about moving to Frankfurt to join us. At the moment they need especial prayer because she is currently applying for teaching jobs and will be tied down for the next 5 years wherever she ends up working. They need wisdom and guidance.

On December 4th we had our fellowship’s annual Christmas party. As I mentioned, our home fellowship has had some new life breathed into it, and our Christmas party is no exception. We had a full house and a blessed time. The Ditthardt family was able to meet most of the people and see for themselves what is going on. We did our usual routine: worship with a sermon, but this time we also had Christmas carols and a “White Elephant” gift exchange. We invited our landlady and her family, who ended up coming and integrated well with the evening. We weren’t sure how they would react to the sermon, but they seemed genuinely interested.

The fact that we now have help here with the church plant has naturally prodded us, at least in prayer, to maybe start meeting weekly in Sundays. This is the next “logical” step, but we want to be led by the Lord. It is a scary step to take, and the last similar one we took fizzled out (our Wednesday evening Bible Study). We are thinking and praying over the whole thing, and need wisdom for all the particulars (when, where, etc.). We are somewhat torn between meeting at our home or renting a small room somewhere. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

We would would appreciate prayer for:

1) Pray for our energy levels and the organization of our private lives. We both work full time and there is often very little strength remaining at the end of the day for ministry. Sometimes it just seems like we are barely able to keep up with life.
2) Pray for God’s guidance if we are to take a step of faith and move to a weekly service. Pray for the particulars of when and where to meet.
3) Pray for the Ditthardt family that moved here to help us. They have taken a hit financially in coming so pray that God would richly provide for them. They are trusting in the Lord but do have some hard days.
4) Pray for wisdom for the other married couple, the Demmer family, who are praying about joining us. They will have to make some tough decisions very soon.

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Marc & Linda