Testimony
Guten Tag! My name is Marc McSweeny and I have been a missionary to Germany since the year 2000. I have served here in Germany in various locations and capacities. I served as an assistant in Calvary Chapel Grünstadt and also in Calvary Chapel Darmstadt. Later I moved to the Bible College in Siegen to teach and I am currently serving in Calvary Chapel Munich. I feel my main callings on the mission field are teaching and pastoral work. I have a heart for church planting and am praying about planting one myself as God leads. I have a great burden for the German people.
My calling to the mission field
Ever since I was a teenager, I had a strange fascination with a country I had never visited: Germany. I took three years of German in high school, drove a German car, and was interested in all things German. These interests began when I didn’t even know the Lord and gradually built up over the years.
Later during college, I made a radical change of direction and went to Bible school, sensing the Lord calling me into the ministry. I finished Bible school, pastoral school, and then went into full time ministry. Being on staff in a big ministry I had the opportunity to experience a wide variety of ministry situations and to get involved in many areas of ministry, from teaching in a Bible school to overseeing the single’s ministry. While originally I was praying about doing ministry in the States, God began to change my heart and show me the need on the mission field. Later it seemed that God began to turn my world upside down and remove every excuse for staying. One day when I was struggling with what God was doing in my life, I heard a still, small voice saying, “What are you waiting for?” With one simple question, God challenged me to abandon the securities of life and enter the mission field. As I prayed for where to go, the destination of Germany was the only answer I received. I then packed my bags and headed off to the unknown in May of 2000. As I moved forward in faith, God began to open the doors to live and minister in Germany.
What God is doing in my life personally
On a personal level, I feel very much in transition. My first years in Germany have been assisting in smaller churches and later I served for four semesters at the Bible College. Though it was a fruitful time of ministry, I felt an increasing desire to return to church ministry and be more active outside the “Christian bubble.” The Lord answered my prayer by sending me to Munich to cover for the pastor while he is gone for six months. I have since come to see that I have become “rusty” in a few areas and therefore need to rediscover many basics of ministry. I am both encouraged by this and also scared. I am encouraged because I see God’s hand in making me a sharp tool, and scary because I see the difficult road ahead. Nevertheless, I press forward for the upward call in Christ Jesus. One thing that is on my mind is that I cannot lead people where I have not gone and my prayer was that God would anoint me for this work. Ministry is about loving God and serving people (yes, loving them, too!). I have heard it said that in ministry you work yourself to death and pray yourself back to life!
