The answer was not found on Mount C…

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• The podcast emphasizes the belief that God often disrupts our plans to guide us towards a greater purpose, which can initially feel unsettling.

• It introduces the concept that periods of upheaval in our lives may serve as divine redirection rather than punishment or failure.

• The speaker shares personal experiences of navigating transitions and highlights the importance of discerning God's voice during times of uncertainty.

• The discussion revolves around the idea that what seems like a loss can actually be a preparation for a new beginning in alignment with God's will.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Awake Nations

• Nations TV

• Awakenations TV

The brook drying up was not Elijah’s destruction; it was God’s direction. Don’t become so focused on what is ending that you fail to hear where God is leading you next.

Unsettled: The Unexpected Path to God’s Purpose is available August 18.

Download a free chapter and preorder at UnsettledBook.com

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Glenn Bleakney reveals three ways God unsettles us: the disruption of plans, the dissipation of resources, and the dissolution of relationships. Discover why disruption does not always mean destruction—sometimes it is God’s preparation for your next season.

Glenn’s new book, Unsettled: The Unexpected Path to God’s Purpose, releases August 18. Download a free chapter and preorder at UnsettledBook.com.

Discover how disruption can become preparation, loss can deepen dependence, and separation can signal the beginning of a new season.

Unsettled by Glenn Bleakney is available August 18. Download a free chapter and preorder for a special discount at https://unsettledbook.com

In Jesus,

Glenn Bleakney

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Shaneen spent more than twenty years in a church in the UK before enduring what she now names plainly as spiritual abuse. In her words, it was mostly the misuse of authority, the kind that grows in a celebrity culture where everyone assumes the leader is right and everything he says must be from God. She knows the cost from the inside. She lost trust in leadership, wondered whether her marriage, her finances, her reputation, and her faith would survive, and reached the place where she wanted to give up. “I’ll still love God,” she remembers thinking, “but I don’t know if I could carry on in ministry.”

She did carry on. And her testimony now is that recovery is possible.

NAMING WHAT WE HAVE TOLERATED

There is a line Shaneen offered that I have not been able to set down: what we confront will die, and what we tolerate dominates. For too many years the church has tolerated toxic culture, and toleration is a kind of permission. We have watched a pattern repeat across the world, in Australia, in America, in Europe, in Asia; a moral failure surfaces, and behind it we discover a culture that was already unwell, leaders who knew something and said nothing, people who felt intimidated and stayed quiet. The failure was the symptom. The tolerated culture was the root.

Part of what has done such deep harm is the weaponizing of Scripture, bending the text to defend the leader or to pressure the wounded. Shaneen named the prosperity distortion especially, the give-and-you-will-be-blessed, withhold-and-you-will-be-cursed manipulation that has bruised so many. I know the genuine scriptural basis for generous giving; that is not what either of us is describing. We are describing the misuse of holy words to control God’s people.

This is why silence is not neutrality. When leadership avoids the truth to protect the institution or the reputation of a leader, it deepens the wound. Shaneen was direct: we minimize what victims have been told, we defend the wrong thing, and we withhold the whole truth. The healthier way is full disclosure, honestly facing what actually took place rather than rushing to defend a system.

THE HEALING IS REAL, AND IT IS PRACTICAL

If you are in the middle of this, Shaneen walked through the practical steps that carried her, and I want to hand them to you plainly.

Call it what it is. Acceptance comes first. Stop defending the abuse. Many of us feel guilty even using the words spiritual abuse, as though naming it were the sin. Naming it honestly is where healing begins.

Forgive. The big “F word” in the church, as she put it. Forgiveness is not a verdict that what happened was acceptable; it is the guarding of your own heart against bitterness, resentment, and the trap of a wound that never closes.

Regain trust. Trust is rebuilt through relationships, face to face, not only through a screen. When we are hurting we isolate, we hide, we carry shame that whispers we did something wrong. Reconnecting is hard precisely there, and it is exactly where the mending happens.

Step back and take counsel. Seek a trusted third party who can assess the situation from every angle. Shaneen did this; she went to two mature elders who took her cause to the leaders. The leaders refused to meet, and Matthew 18 was never honored, and her wound went deeper because a biblical principle was denied. Her counsel still stands: get wise, outside help.

See a therapist if you need one. There is good Christian therapy available, and there is nothing unspiritual about it. Churches, of all places, should be the ones encouraging it.

DON’T LET GO OF THE CHURCH

Here is the part I most want the wounded to hear, and it comes from someone who earned the right to say it. Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t let go of the church.

Shaneen reclaimed her faith and her healing by going back to community. Not the polished, trending, everything-looks-perfect environment she had known for years; she now belongs to a small local village Bible study, and she has found there the authenticity and the deeper, meaningful connection her soul actually needed. “We don’t find community,” she told me. “We build community.” She lost friends in the season of her hurt, people who judged her and fell away, and she grieved them; but others stood beside her, and those are the ones she chose to build with.

The Scripture we opened with was Hebrews 10:25, that we not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another, all the more as we see the Day drawing near. The Day is drawing near, and it is dark out there, and we were never meant to walk this road alone.

MEND BEFORE SEND

I shared with Shaneen something I teach here often. In Ephesians 4:12, the word for equipping carries the sense of mending or repairing. The fivefold ministry does not exist merely so you can identify your gift and your calling; it exists to make you whole, to form Christ in you until we come to the full stature of Christ. God wants to mend you before He sends you.

That is the reformation I believe we are living through. Not the destruction of the church, but its divine reconstruction; leaders being revived and made healthy, relationships being realigned, the authentic gospel being recovered after a decade of sugarcoating. A generation that will not settle for half-truths is asking, honestly, what is true, and where can we go if we cannot trust the church? The answer cannot be a better facade. It has to be a church with a pure heart and clean hands, a place where Jesus is truly honored as Lord and people are loved because they bear His image.

So if you have been hurt, hear this from someone who has been where you are and has come out the other side. It took her a while. It may take you a while. But healing is possible, community can be rebuilt, and the Father is near to the brokenhearted.

Be brave. Reconnect.

Shaneen Clarke has ministered for thirty years across Europe and beyond. You can connect with her at shaneenclarke.com. This post is drawn from our conversation on the podcast; a fuller follow-up on spiritual fathers and mothers is on the way.

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In this honest and hope-filled conversation, Glenn Bleakney sits down with Christian speaker and leadership coach Shaneen Clarke to explore the growing crisis of spiritual abuse, toxic church culture, and moral failure within the Church.

Drawing from her own journey of healing and restoration, Shaneen shares practical wisdom for rebuilding trust, processing disappointment, and rediscovering authentic Christian community without losing your faith in Jesus.

Together they discuss:

• What spiritual abuse really looks like

• Why so many believers are walking away from church

• How to recover from toxic leadership

• The difference between faith in Christ and disappointment with people

• Building healthy, Christ-centred communities

• Practical steps toward healing, forgiveness, and restoration

Whether you've experienced church hurt personally, are walking with someone through it, or are a leader seeking to cultivate a healthier church culture, this conversation offers biblical wisdom, compassion, and genuine hope.

Connect with Shaneen Clarke:

🌐 https://shaneenclarke.com

Learn more about Glenn Bleakney and Awake Nations:

🌐 https://AwakeNations.org

📺 https://AwakeNations.tv

#ChurchHurt #SpiritualAbuse #Faith #ChristianPodcast #Healing #ChurchLeadership #KingdomReformation #ShaneenClarke #GlennBleakney #Discipleship

Drawing from her own journey and years of guiding others, Shaneen offers a compassionate roadmap for those wrestling with their spiritual identity after experiencing emotional abuse in faith settings. She tackles the challenging question many face: how do we reconcile our image of a loving God with painful experiences in His church?

This episode delves deep into the healing process, offering practical wisdom for rebuilding trust and finding authentic community after church hurt. Shaneen shares transformative insights on the power of forgiveness without diminishing the validity of pain, while providing concrete tools for those ready to step into their next chapter of faith.

Whether you're personally processing church trauma or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers both validation and hope for the journey ahead.

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Dear friends,

I’m excited to share that my new book, Unsettled: The Unexpected Path to God’s Purpose, is launching on Tuesday, August 18, on all major platforms.

This book has come from a deep place in my own journey with the Lord. Unsettled is for anyone who has ever found themselves in a season of transition, disruption, waiting, or uncertainty, and wondered what God was doing beneath the surface.

So often we interpret unsettled seasons as signs that something is wrong. But what if those very moments are part of God’s process of leading us into deeper trust, greater intimacy, and a fuller expression of His purpose?

In Unsettled, I share biblical insight, practical encouragement, and spiritual perspective to help readers recognize the hand of God in seasons that feel unclear, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar. My prayer is that this book will help people stop resisting the process and begin discerning how God is preparing them for what is next.

JOIN ME FOR THE LIVE LAUNCH

To celebrate the release, I’m hosting a free online launch on Tuesday, August 18 at 10:00 AM AEST which is Monday, August 17 at 8:00 PM Eastern Time in North America, streaming live on YouTube.

Watch the live for encouragement, and a first look inside Unsettled. Bring a friend — everyone is welcome.

Click here and tap “Notify me” so YouTube reminds you the moment we go live:

The book is also available for pre-order on Amazon now, and you can read a free sample chapter at unsettledbook.com.

I would be so grateful if you would help spread the word. Perhaps you know someone who is navigating change, waiting on direction, or feeling unsettled in this season. I believe this message could truly encourage and strengthen them.

Thank you for your friendship, encouragement, and support. I’m praying this book impacts many lives and helps people encounter God in the very places they may have least expected Him.

Blessings,

Glenn Bleakney

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In this teaching, we unpack the Hebrew roots of "Cherith" (to cut, to cut covenant) and "hide" (saphah, the same word behind Psalm 31:20's "secret place") to reveal that Elijah's hiding wasn't only about provision, it was preparation. Discover the three things God was doing in the secret place, communion, cutting, and covenant, and why this hidden curriculum still shapes every voice God sends to a generation.

If you've ever wondered why the wilderness season feels so long, this message will show you what God is actually building in the hidden place before He brings you out.

In this thought-provoking conversation, Glenn Bleakney sits down with Dr. Mark Chironna to explore how efficiency, branding, celebrity leadership, and consumer-driven models have reshaped the Western church. Drawing on George Ritzer’s concept of “McDonaldization,” Dr. Chironna challenges leaders to rediscover a Christ-centered, cross-shaped vision of ministry rooted in spiritual formation rather than performance.

Together they discuss the influence of Enlightenment thinking, the rise of CEO-style leadership, the loss of theological depth, the dangers of celebrity Christianity, and why the Church must return to the ancient way of Jesus. This conversation offers a compelling call to recover authentic discipleship, servant leadership, and the transforming presence of Christ.

Whether you’re a pastor, ministry leader, or passionate follower of Jesus, this episode will challenge you to rethink what it truly means to lead—and to follow—the King.

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Take Awake Nations with you wherever you go by downloading the Kingdom Community TV app on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Roku, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Browse all available apps at https://www.kingdomcommunity.tv/apps or install the Roku channel directly at https://channelstore.roku.com/details/d1b95e000082771470c3caafe2089e45/kingdom-community-tv.

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There is a parable buried in the practice of the Australian cattlemen, and like most parables it conceals its wisdom beneath the dust of the ordinary.

Across the vast interior of this continent, where the land stretches past the horizon and the heat presses down like a hand, the rancher faces a problem that no fence can solve; the territory is simply too large, too unyielding, too expensive to enclose. To wall in such country would be an act of futility, a labour that consumes the whole of a man’s strength and yields him nothing but a perimeter he cannot defend.

And so the wisest among them have abandoned the logic of the fence altogether and embraced the logic of the well. They dig down into the hidden aquifers, the deep cool reservoirs that lie beneath the cracked surface of the earth, and they bring the water up; and the cattle, having tasted it, do not wander. They remain near the water not because a barrier compels them but because their thirst is satisfied.

The herd is held not by restriction but by refreshment; not by the threat of what lies beyond the boundary but by the abundance of what lies at the centre.

I do not introduce this image as a charming illustration to be admired and set aside; I introduce it because it names, with a precision that our ecclesiastical language has lost, the crisis confronting the church in this hour. We have become, by long habit and unexamined inheritance, a fence-building people. We have invested our energies in the construction and maintenance of boundaries, and we have grown skilled at the work; we know how to mark the line that separates the included from the excluded, the credentialed from the uncredentialed, the member from the stranger. But while we have laboured over our perimeters the springs have run dry, and a herd dies of thirst inside a perfectly maintained enclosure as surely as it dies wandering in the open country.

The question before us is not whether our fences are strong. The question is whether there is any water within them.

THE CRISIS IS NOT WHAT WE HAVE NAMED IT

When the church examines its own decline it tends to diagnose a problem of doctrine or a problem of mission; we conclude that we have believed wrongly or that we have failed to go, and we set ourselves to correcting the creed or reviving the programme. These are not trivial concerns, and I do not dismiss them; but I have become persuaded that beneath the failures of doctrine and the failures of mission there lies a deeper and more structural failure, a failure of leadership design. We have built our common life upon a faulty pattern, and the pattern reproduces its faults in everything it touches.

Consider what has happened to spiritual authority in our generation. The authority that the apostles carried was the authority of the well-digger; it flowed from their proximity to the source, from the manifest reality that those who drew near to them drew near to living water. But somewhere in the long institutionalisation of the faith we exchanged this authority for something that wears its clothing and counterfeits its voice: we exchanged authority for control.

Authority gives life; control merely manages it. Authority draws; control contains.

The two are not the same, and the difference between them is the difference between a spring and a cistern. The leader who carries authority need not enforce his position, for the water vouches for him; the leader who possesses only control must defend his position perpetually, because the moment the enforcement ceases the people scatter, having found no reason to remain.

And so we arrive at the strange spectacle of a church that is exhausting itself in the work of management while the very thing that management was meant to protect quietly evaporates. We have substituted the fathering of movements with the administering of systems. We have substituted the cultivation of presence with the enforcement of programmes and the conferring of titles. We have, in short, become very good at the wrong thing, and our competence in the wrong thing has obscured from us how completely we have abandoned the right one. The reformation that God is working in this hour is, at its root, a summons to return: to lay down the trowel of the fence-builder and take up the spade of the well-digger.

BOUNDED SETS AND CENTRED SETS

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch have given us a vocabulary that illuminates this distinction with unusual clarity, drawing upon a contrast that originates in set theory but finds its truest application in the life of the community of faith; they speak of bounded sets and centred sets, and the two describe not merely different methods of organisation but different theologies of belonging.

A bounded set is defined by its border. It exists to answer a single question, asked and answered at the perimeter: who is in, and who is out? It establishes the line and then expends its energy patrolling it. Its markers are external and they are many—the denominational affiliation, the doctrinal subscription, the behavioural code, the cultural conformity—and membership is determined by one’s position relative to the wall. To belong is to be inside; to be outside is to be other.

A centred set operates upon an entirely different principle. It is defined not by its border but by its centre, and the question it asks is not where a person stands relative to a line but in which direction a person is moving relative to the centre. Are you oriented toward Christ? Are you moving toward Him, drawing nearer, being formed? In this configuration the energy of leadership is not spent at the edges, for there are no edges to patrol; it is spent at the centre, in the deepening and the clarifying of the source toward which all are invited to move.

A well has no perimeter. It does not concern itself with how far the cattle have ranged; it concerns itself only with the purity and the depth of its water.

The leader who grasps this stops trying to control the edges, and the cessation of that effort is itself a kind of liberation; for the policing of boundaries is endless labour, and the leader who lays it down discovers that he has been freed for the only work that finally matters, which is the work of cultivating a Christ-saturated environment where the living water rises. Our Lord Himself established the principle in His conversation at the well in Samaria, where He declared to the woman:

“Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14, ESV)

Here is the entire vocation of spiritual leadership compressed into a sentence: we are not the water, and we were never meant to be; Jesus is the well, and our calling is simply to lead the thirsty to Him and then to step aside that they might drink.

THE APOSTOLIC PATTERN WAS NEVER AN EMPIRE

When we turn from our inherited assumptions to the actual record of apostolic leadership in the New Testament, we encounter something that ought to unsettle us, for it bears almost no resemblance to the structures we have erected in its name. We look at Paul and Barnabas, at Priscilla and Aquila, at the whole company of those who carried the gospel across the Mediterranean world, and we do not find empires; we find movements. We do not find central headquarters issuing directives to compliant branches; we find decentralised communities bound together by something stronger than organisational hierarchy. The relationships among them were built upon trust rather than positional control, upon covenant partnership rather than denominational bureaucracy; and the instinct of these leaders, when they raised up others, was not to retain them but to release them, not to hoard the platform but to multiply the platforms by giving them away.

This was the fivefold ministry functioning as it was designed to function, which is to say functioning as spiritual family rather than as institutional apparatus. The apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher—these were never offices to be occupied and defended; they were equipping gifts, given for the maturing of the saints and the building up of the body, and their whole orientation was outward and downward, toward the equipping of others rather than the elevation of self. The leaders of the early church were not gatekeepers stationed at the perimeter to regulate access; they were well-diggers labouring at the centre to deepen the source, drawing the people to the water of the Spirit and the water of the Word.

TEN WAYS THE WELL IS DUG

If this is the crisis and this is the calling, then the practical question presses upon us: what does it actually mean to dig a well in the soil of our own context? I offer ten disciplines—not techniques to be applied mechanically, but postures to be cultivated in the heart of the leader who would create life-giving space.

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📖 Learn more at https://kingdomreformation.org

Have we traded presence for programs, and power for performance?

Are we carrying man-made substitutes instead of God's pure glory?

This episode will challenge you to:

• Recognize where compromise has crept in.

• Discern the difference between outward success and inward substance.

• Return to authentic, Spirit-empowered ministry that carries the true weight of glory.

Lay down the bronze. Seek the gold. Return to the fire.

You have probably heard it taught. There are two Greek words for “word” in the New Testament. Logos, we are told, is the written Word, the Bible on the shelf, the settled and unchanging Scripture. Rhema is the spoken word, the living word the Holy Spirit drops into your heart in the moment you need it most. It is a beautiful idea. It preaches well. And for many of us, it was one of the first “deeper truths” we ever learned.

But is it actually true?

TWO WORDS, ONE MEANING

Here is the heart of it. Logos and rhema are both simply translated “word.” And in the Greek of the New Testament, they overlap so completely that the writers use them interchangeably. The Greek Old Testament that Jesus and the apostles read used both words to translate one Hebrew word, dabar, “word.” There is no fixed wall between them. The neat little chart, logos on one side and rhema on the other, was never in the language to begin with.

The fastest way to see this is to look at the very places where the popular teaching would demand the word rhema, and find logos sitting there instead.

THE WORD THAT HEALED

Think about the spoken, living, in-the-moment words of Jesus. If anything should be rhema, surely it is the words that came out of His mouth and changed everything on the spot.

Watch what Matthew writes. “That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick” (Matthew 8:16). A spoken word. A word of power. A word that drove out demons and healed bodies in the moment. And the Greek word there is logos.

Or stand with the crowd in the synagogue at Nazareth. “And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Luke 4:22). Fresh words. Anointed words. Words flowing in real time. And again, the Greek is logos.

By the popular definition, every one of these should have been rhema. They are not.

THE WORD TURNED AROUND

Now let me show you the other side, because this is where the chart truly falls apart.

When the enemy tempted Jesus in the wilderness, our Lord answered, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). This is Jesus quoting the oldest, most settled, most written Scripture there is, the book of Deuteronomy. If any word in the New Testament should be logos, it is this one.

But the Greek word Jesus uses there is rhema.

The chart has it exactly backwards. And it has it backwards because there was never a chart to get right.

WHY THIS MATTERS

You might wonder why this is worth a whole teaching. Let me tell you plainly. When we build a doctrine on the original Greek, and the Greek does not actually say what we claimed, we quietly teach people that it is fine to handle God’s Word carelessly as long as it sounds spiritual. And worse, we leave the door open for someone’s private “rhema word” to be lifted up over the written Word of God, as if a feeling in the moment carried more authority than the Book in your lap. That is a dangerous door to leave open.

WHAT IS REALLY TRUE

So is there any truth here worth keeping? Yes. There absolutely is.

There is a real and wonderful difference, not between two Greek words, but between two experiences of the one Word of God. There is the Scripture you have read a hundred times. And then there is the morning when that same verse suddenly lifts off the page, looks you in the eye, and speaks to your exact situation. The words on the page did not change. The Holy Spirit simply breathed on them and brought them alive for you.

That is not the difference between logos and rhema. That is the difference between reading the Word and hearing the Word. And it is real.

So treasure the living encounter. Open your Bible and ask the Spirit who inspired it to make it burn in your heart today. But anchor that encounter in the written Word, and keep every fresh impression tested by and submitted to the Scripture that never changes. You do not need a Greek myth to enjoy the living voice of God. You only need the Book, and the Spirit who wrote it.

Has a verse ever come alive in your hands when you needed it most? That was not a different kind of word. That was the same God who has spoken, speaking still.

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