Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 249 Pete Portal - What Does Success in the Kingdom of God Look Like?
Today we have a conversation with Pete Portal, author of the book "How to Be (Un)successful" (or "Stop Trying to Be Successful" for our American listeners). Pete has spent the last 15 years living and working in the township of Mannenberg, South Africa, a community plagued by gang violence, drug addiction, and systemic injustice. What Pete has learned through this experience flies in the face of much of our conventional thinking about success, achievement, and the role of the church. He argues that true success in the kingdom of God is not about what you accomplish, but who you become - a life of faithfulness, vulnerability, and reciprocal relationship, even in the face of deep betrayal and suffering. Pete shares powerful stories of how God is at work, often in the most unexpected places, to raise up the valleys and humble the mountains. He challenges the notion of "culture wars" and the church's tendency to try and "invade and occupy" systems of power, instead calling us to a "seven valleys mandate" - to pervade the forgotten, marginalized spaces of society with the humble, self-giving love of Christ. This is a conversation that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about success, the role of the church, and how the kingdom of God breaks into our world. It is deeply inspiring and profoundly hopeful. So join us.
Pete Portal serves on the Core Leadership Team of Tree of Life, a 24-7 Prayer Community based in Manenberg, Cape Town. He does life with young men coming out of gangsterism and drug addiction and helps these young men find faith, freedom and wholeness. He's on the board of 24-7 Prayer South Africa, and spends much of his time growing relationships and networks across racial and socio-economic divides, as well as speaking at churches and organisations both locally and internationally on matters of faith and social transformation.
Pete holds Masters degrees in Theology (Edinburgh) and Theology, Politics and Faith-based Organisations (Kings College London); He's written articles for The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times.
Pete has written two books - No Neutral Ground, and How to be (Un)successful.
Pete's Book:
Stop Trying to Be Successful
Pete's Recommendations:
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
The Critical Journey
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Yeah, success in the kingdom of God is not what you achieve, it's who you become. It's refusing to define your life through endeavors that others would quantify as, quote, successful. It's recognizing the myth that you are worth what others applaud you for.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcasts in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, well, today we have a conversation with Pete portal, author of the book, how to be unsuccessful or stop trying to be successful. For our American listeners, Pete has spent the last 15 years living and working in the township of mannenberg, South Africa, a community plagued with gang violence, drug addiction and systemic injustice. What Pete has learned through this experience flies in the face of much of our conventional thinking about success, achievement and the role of the church. He argues that true success in the kingdom of God is not about what you accomplish, but who you become. A life of faithfulness, vulnerability and reciprocal relationship, even in the face of deep betrayal and suffering, Pete shares powerful stories of how God is at work, often in the most unexpected places, to raise up the valleys and humble the mountains. He challenges the notion of culture wars and the church's tendency to try and invade and occupy systems of power instead calling us to a seven valleys mandate to pervade the forgotten, marginalized spaces of society with the humble self giving love of Christ. This is a conversation that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about success, the role of the church and how the Kingdom of God breaks into our world, it is deeply inspiring and profoundly hopeful. So join us. Here is my conversation with Pete portal. All right, Pete, welcome to shifting culture. Thanks for joining me. I'm so excited to have you on
Pete Portal:thanks for having me. It's good to see you. Joshua, how are you doing?
Joshua Johnson:I'm doing great. You know, the last time we recorded, or attempted to record, an incredible conversation in Cape Town, when I was there in person, and I just remember the end of the interview, clicking the button, and then it started recording. And I felt horrible. I felt bad, but I'm so glad to have you back. So
Pete Portal:we had a great conversation that day. And actually, I saw, I saw the friend who works at that studio this week. He brought that up, and he also said, he said, I feel so terrible still about that. I said, Honestly, don't worry about it. So you're both blaming yourself. So we we did use didn't we, at the end that maybe it was just one of those me, you and me, you and Jesus moments. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:that's exactly right. That's good. So I'd love to get into, you know, some of your story, your new book, how to be unsuccessful. Or, if you're looking at the American version, stop trying to be successful. Right? You got two, two little titles there. I want to hear your story of moving, moving to mandenburg. What does it look like to get some sort of a calling on your life and and what was the idealized version of what was going to happen when you got there?
Pete Portal:Yeah, there's a lot there. I mean, that's, that's hours worth of conversation. I mean, the first thing to say for listeners who I imagine won't have heard of mannenberg is that it's a community 20 kilometers to the east of Cape Town, city center. It's a community I always say that shouldn't exist. It was built by the apartheid government in the 60s for those deemed non white whose homes were bulldozed and who were forcibly removed from the city center, and, you know, into substandard housing 20 kilometers out of town with no good transport or the rest of it. And so today in mannenberg, you know, the complex collective trauma of historic injustice remains today. You know, if you're if your turf had been violated so badly, guess what, you would probably join a gang to defend your turf. If you felt like a second class citizen because you had been thrown out by the government, you would probably find some way to medicate the pain. And so today, gangs and drugs, uh, whilst they don't dictate all parts of life in manden boat, they're a significant part of it. And it's a part of Cape Town that you know tourists wouldn't go to, and you'd be told you're you're foolish to come here, and that sort of thing. Yeah, and so yeah, I you know, as you know, and as others will be able to tell, I'm not from South Africa. I'm British. And it was actually, and I kind of, whenever I tell the story, I feel almost embarrassed to say it. But it was a, it was, it was a short term mission trip that got me to South Africa, a six week student led short term mission trip back in 2007 when I was in my early 20s, and a friend of mine said, Do you want to come to do you want to come to Cape Town on a short term mission trip? And I said to him, No, thanks. I'm I'm all good. I think I was going through, or rather, I I thought at the time, I was going through a cool phase, and so I didn't want to be part of anything associated with the Christian Union. It just seemed a bit crummy, you know, like, yeah, I subsequently realized how wrong I was, and I never have ever been through a cool phase, I don't think, but, um, but this friend said to me, he played the Christian trump card. He said, Will you at least pray about it? And And when someone says that to you, can you can hardly say no, I flat out refuse to pray about your request. So I went back to my student digs, and I prayed, and nothing, nothing seemed to happen. Only that a week later, I then got a letter through the post from the National Health Service in the UK, you know this world leading free medical health care that we Brits love to moan about and you, you Americans could probably only dream about. And so this letter came through from the National Health Service saying that the shoulder operation that I had been scheduled for the last nine months on a waiting list to get was now scheduled for a certain date, which was smack bang in the middle of this six week short term mission trip. So I went back to my friend waving this letter, this appointment letter, saying, you know, I think God answered and he said, Well, why don't you just give them a call and see if they can change the date? I said, I'll be waiting nine months for this, you know, I really want to mess this up. My shoulder was dislocating all over the shop, and anyway, I did in the end, and I phoned the shoulder consultant, and his secretary picked up, and I immediately clocked an accent I didn't recognize. So I said to her, Look, a friend wants me to go on this trip. You know, is there any chance of moving the date? She said, Well, not really. But what sort of trip is it? And I said, it's a Christian mission trip. She goes, Oh, I'm a Christian. Like, whereabouts too. And I said, South Africa. She goes, Okay, well, I'm South African, like, where in South Africa? And I said, a town outside cape town called Pearl. And she said, You're not going to believe this, but I'm from Pearl. And then she said, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I think God might want you to go on this trip. And after my initial thought of how unprofessional bringing religion into the workplace, which Brits don't like to do, as you all know, I I had to concede that it seemed like a setup. So I went back to my friend said, Yep. Well, come long story short, we were there for six weeks, achieved absolutely nothing of any lasting worth or value, except that, actually, I've been reflecting on this more recently, we would visit prison every day where we had planned to go and share the glorious message of the gospel through playing volleyball with inmates now, now they didn't want to play volleyball. We couldn't play volleyball, but it for some reason, some bright spark, had thought this, this is, you know, this is Missionary gold. So that's gospel 101, right there. All right, yeah, we've got the answers. We can't actually implement them, but you know, surely people come to Christ in droves. And so after about an hour of awkwardness, we all gave up and decided just to sit and listen to people. And we just heard story after story of grinding poverty, abuse, violence, trauma, crime, addiction, you name it, systemic injustice everywhere. And we'd come back to the little house that we were staying in in a township not dissimilar to mannenberg, where I live now, and we would just sit in this room that we had we had dedicated the third bedroom of this house to being a 24/7 prayer room, and we would just come back home and we would just weep and travail and cry out to the Lord. And so when I say that we achieve really nothing of any lasting value, I think what did happen was that as we cried out to the Lord, he actually moved certainly in my heart and deposited just a shred of his heart for the next generation of young Cape colored, which is a local term for mixed race Afrikaans, speaking people, Cape colored young men growing up in cycles of addiction, violence, poverty and gangster. Reason, and so I went back to London, told anybody who would listen about the trip. No one cared. You know, I was in my early 20s being on a short term mission trip. Wow, who cares? Um, but then at the time, I don't know if I knew what constituted a calling Joshua, to be honest, except that I was just wound up, and I couldn't let go of this schizophrenic city, you know, Cape Town, where it is kind of glitter on the one side and ghetto on the other. And I just thought, what if, what if I moved back there? What if I could, I could live in a township like the one we had been in, and just invite young men to come live with me. And you know, I know we're not meant to put God to the test, but you know, I believed the gospel was true, but I wanted to see it work in in the lives of those that the world put last, honestly, because I read that Jesus puts them first. And so that's not a long story short or long story long. I then moved back to Cape Town in 2009 in theory, for two years, but I've been here ever since.
Joshua Johnson:You know, I was just reflecting last night. I had a family over for dinner. We have a missionary training we're doing right now. They live in Central Asia, and they're doing a lot of similar work to what you're doing. And he was born in Cape Town from South Africa. And I just think it is what an interesting thing that the Lord does, that God does. He moves people from one country to another to disrupt the natural order of what is going on, and there's some disruption that's happening. He's moving from South Africa to Central Asia, doing some of this work that needs a disruption and needs a new imagination. But he's not doing it there in Cape Town. I just find it interesting that God moves us into new places for disruption. And so as you were disrupted from your own quiet life in England, and you moved into to mannenberg, how were you disrupted in the middle of what you were seeing on the ground?
Pete Portal:Oh, my word. I mean, you're right. This, this disruption thing, you know, it makes zero sense on in a cerebral human mindset, you know, why wouldn't God just keep your friend in Cape Town, keep me in England? It's not like they're, you know, we've got enough, enough believers in England, or anything, um, but, but you're right. God disrupts our plans with his own, which are inestimably better, of course. And I think the way I'd answer your question is, by way of describing my life as a as a long unlearning. It's a long unlearning of the, you know, quite expensive British education and the sense that, you know, middle class British men have the answers which no one would have said growing up. But you know, that's implied in, you know, and so I moved to mannenberg. I couldn't speak the language. I put the significant thing in moving to mannenberg, age 23 and living with a 19 year old friend who assured me that he was off heroin, and then it rapidly emerged that he wasn't through the entire contents of the house go missing the the the absolute value in that was that it put me in a place of need towards him, so I wasn't the one coming to help him. Sure that was one part of it. But actually, for me to survive and even thrive in the community, he needed to be, you know, large hearted enough to introduce me to his friends and explain to me the quirks and idiosyncrasies of how life worked, and called me out when I said something stupid. And, you know, there began this, this beautiful friendship there, because I was so powerless to affect any change in not myself. And so unlearning and reciprocity really were the great disruptors in my life, where I thought I had the answers I'd come to help. I, you know, I couldn't wire a plug, I couldn't hang a door. I didn't know how to mix cement. You know, all of these things everyone in manabo grows up knowing. And you know, this British education couldn't, you know, didn't, didn't equip me for life here at all. You know, there's this great quote by the Aboriginal activist from Australia called Lana Watson. And she she said, Look, if you've if you've come here to help, don't bother. But if somehow your freedom is wrapped up in mine, well, let's walk together. And that is exactly what I learned, that that my freedom is wrapped up in the lives of others, maybe more of. Sensibly needing help. But actually, when one puts oneself in a point of need and develops friendships of true reciprocity, that is where a co liberation can begin. I think,
Joshua Johnson:you know, if I'm I'm reflecting on the many conflicts in the world there are, are so many horrific conflicts right now, and it feels like we're reciprocity is not happening. It's not my freedom. Is not caught up in your freedom. It is not a a co mingling together to figure out, how do we do this, one to another. How have you seen a different model, a model that's not a hey, I have been traumatized and hurts and, you know, offended in some way. So I'm going to then traumatize others. I'm going to offend others. I'm going to hurt other people. How have you seen a different thing happening? How has a place where your freedom and their freedom are caught together? How is that working?
Pete Portal:Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it honestly glacially slow. It is unbelievably slow. There is simply no shortcuts. You know, I was hearing a story of a church in America that I'm connected to relationally with friends who are there and and they said, Well, of course, the early days, the church grew quickly. Within three years, it was 4000 strong. And I thought, and I, you know, my jaw hit the ground. And obviously that's America for you, and it's, you know, the Midwest. And you know, if you can't grow a church there, then, you know, no, that's probably sounds mean, but there are probably plenty of people who can't for absolutely valid reasons. But, but it wasn't so much that. It was more just the idea of something growing to 4000 people in three years. I just thought, Where on earth would the depth be? Where on earth would the vulnerability be? Where on earth would you know, true community be, you know? And I get it, you have to come up with systems and all that sort of thing. But I just thought, thank God he's not called me to that, you know. And bless those people he has. But I think a big part of it is, is honestly learning to navigate betrayal, I think, but betrayal is an interesting one. There's a reason it's a central theme in so many books and movies, right? Because it is so heart wrenching. It is so how are you going to respond? What's going to happen next? You know, will there be redemption or vengeance, etc, and, and, and, of course, you know Jesus modeled, you know, how to deal with betrayal in the most gloriously humble and loving ways. But at the same time, not even Jesus could get his disciples to do what he wanted. And that's quite a freeing thing to recognize. And so. So from my point of view, as you know, I will pour everything I've got into a small number of young men, particularly, we do work with young women as well. But you know, the women in our in our staff team, will be mentoring and discipling them primarily. And I'll pour everything I've got into these young men, and I heard a great definition of love that is, love is giving people the power to crush you and trusting them not to. And when you're working with traumatized, angry, you know, neglected, potentially abused, addicted, young men, then you are handing your heart to them on a plate, which I believe is, is, is, you know, people say honey, worried people are going to take advantage until they can't take something that I'm giving if I'm giving advantage, if I'm saying, Listen, this is me, you know, then, then, actually, it's disarming in that sense. But it doesn't mean you won't get betrayed and let down, of course. But I think what I'm beginning to realize is that betrayal isn't necessarily even always betrayal, because if someone relapses or steals my stuff or whatever, it's not necessary, they've got an issue with me. Probably not. They're just they're just craving to use their drug of choice, or dealing with the deep agony of being alive and wanting. You know, pain seeks pleasure, right? And yet, if I, if I internalize that as a personal betrayal, it's like, oh, well done, Pete, you just inserted yourself into the center of somebody's story. It's, it's actually betrayal, I think, in many ways, is just an inability to love well. And so this, this, to go back to your question, I suppose like even betrayal, if we allow it, can be our greatest teacher, because there's nothing like deep betrayal from the people you love most, or individuals you poured yourself into entirely to give. You an idea of, again, like a shred of what it must feel like for God, when we when I betray him on a daily basis. And so if that's the case, then even betrayal need never be final. Need never be a kind of a heart hardening exercise, but can actually be something that tenderizes us again to the heart of God towards us, and counterintuitively, or kind of paradoxically draws us back into close communion with Jesus. And I think that's almost sort of spiritual warfare at its most intense is whatever somebody will throw at me, you know. And it's easy for me to sit here waxing about it now, but like, you know, in the in the moment, you know, I'm effing and blinding and all sorts of faith crises, but, but I think that that's, that's a big part of the CO liberation bit, is that even me at my worst and most betraying self, that can actually be a paradoxically liberating exercise for the person I've let down and vice versa. So that's something that I'm definitely learning over the last 15 years, and there really are no shortcuts for that, because reconciliation, you know, you can, you can lose trust in an instant, but to build trust again, oh, you know, takes, takes a long, long time.
Joshua Johnson:So speak to your 23 year old self 15 years ago. Imagine him just hearing what you just said, What is the difference of what was in your mind going into mandenburg? What did you think success would look like once you hit the ground in mandenburg? Oh,
Pete Portal:I mean, and you know, in many ways, I still hold to this. It would be seeing a tipping point in one community. So in mannenberg, you know, we have many people come to us and say, we could scale this. You could replicate it across the Western Cape. And we say, well, actually, no, you couldn't. You could replicate the form of it, but not the substance, the relationships and the history. So one community hitting a tipping point of transformation, whereby young men, previously in gangs and drugs, are so deeply healed and transformed by the love of Christ and then transforming others that you begin to see some kind of tipping point or critical mass in turning around cycles of, you know, chronic despair and addiction. Now I wouldn't have necessarily had it, put it in those way, in those words, but I would have, I'd have thought back in the day a large number of, you know, hundreds, probably by now, of young men leaving gangs and drugs, following Jesus with their whole heart and never turning back, relapsing or doubting. And you know, I what I didn't have was a grid for relapse being part of recovery. You know, part of the recovery journey is that you do relapse sometimes, or that you know dark nights of the soul, or doubt or desolation in certain ways, or cynicism around prayer, all of that can actually paradoxically be growth in the Christian life and that. So that's why I didn't have a grid fall back as a 23 year old. Now, now I'm a lot less, I take a lot less personally, and I'm a lot less, I suppose, melodramatic about you know, one person making destructive choices, and it's like, no, it's all right, like my world needn't cave in, and actually, theirs needn't cave in. And you know, if it will all be all right in the end, and it's not all right, then it's not the end.
Joshua Johnson:Can you tell me a story of where somebody realizes that their their freedom, that they need, is not really just to get off of drugs or whatever they have, but it is actually a deeper soul issue that they have underneath the the numbing effect of what drugs says drugs can be a symptom of what's really underneath and what really where true freedom comes from, which is, you know, from the inside out.
Pete Portal:Yeah, right. I mean, I think of one, one, young man. I mean, I always say young man. I mean, he's, yeah, he's, we're all getting a bit older these days, but he, he's, he's, he must be six, seven years clean off crystal meth, left the gang around the same time as he got clean, you know, he had been living in a burnt out car in a neighbor's yard. His nickname was the great escape because he had been shot at from point blank range and missed by a bunch of rival gangsters. God preserved His life, you know, incredible, but he had restraining orders against him. He was caught up in all sorts of gang activity, and so, yeah, he's, he's been six, seven years clean. And yet, you know, we will talk on a regular basis about how the thing that's hardest, the thing that is hardest to kind of kill or that to die, is the the gang subculture mentality, what you wear, how you walk, how you speak, how you relate to others, that sense of wanting to dominate or control or whatever, and and that's you know, you can be delivered off drugs in an instant. And actually, he wasn't. He walked it out and continues to just quite it just just won't let go of his sobriety in Jesus along the way. Everything he's been modeled growing up as a fatherless young boy who then joined a gang and all of that sort of thing, everything he's been modeled about manhood was pretty much toxic. And so he's again, he's on his own journey of unlearning, and that's the great leveler that in the gospel, we find that any of our upbringings, loyalties or cultural suppositions are actually sub kingdom and and so that that's where we can actually say, Listen, I don't relate remotely to your upbringing, but I do relate to old habits dying hard, and old cultural mindsets and identities and personas taking a long time to be crucified so that it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
Joshua Johnson:You know, as he's moving into that space. Talk to me like, What is the the difficulty as you're working with with gang members, drug addicts, people that really need community to thrive, and you know, they're saying, Hey, we had our turf taken, so we have to galvanize together to make sure that we could stay here and to be okay and be safe. And so they formed a deep bond and a deep community. Was there a place where extraction from that community really kind of didn't work out very well, or is there a place where you actually keep communal relations. What does that work look like when there is such a deep communal bond already in with people?
Pete Portal:Well, it's an, yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's, it's an interesting one, you see, because, because gangsters, they talk a good game to each other. You know, you're my brother. And obviously they've all, you know, they've got tattoos with the different gang insignia and various bits and bobs, and you then have to work your way up the ranks of the gang through stabbing or shooting people, etc. So it's and the older guys. The discipleship model of gangs is really brilliant. You know, you've got older guys teaching younger guys how to shoot guns and how to use drugs and how to house break and how to evade police and how to, you know, we could learn a lot from them, but, but at its root, it is counterfeit. There is a recognition in any of the guys who come to live with live with us, in the in the home that we've got across the road from our house that that actually, they come to us exhausted. They come to us exhausted from trying to maintain a persona, trying to there's an Afrikaans phrase called sterkha free. And sterk read basically means, like strong faced and and it's that, it's that like, you know, is that, is that sort of like needing to be intimidating and needing to be aggressive and never showing an emotional weakness, and that's exhausting, if you keep that up long enough, yeah, they come to us and they actually begin to feel again. That's one of the things that we've noticed. I think of one young guy who, I mean, he's now 12 years off heroin and married with four kids, you know, again, I say young guy, he's mid 30s, but, um, you know, he, we gave him a job a few years ago, years ago, he now owns his own business, and he's doing great. But he, he said to me, I was driving down manaberg Avenue in the Tree of Life vehicle. Tree of Life is the name of our 24/7 prayer community. And he said I got caught up in crossfire gang, gang fight, you know, guy shooting across the road. So he said, I braked and I reversed, and I quickly did a three point turn and got here, and he's, he's like, and I'm shaking, right? And I feel like crying, and I don't know what's wrong with me, because I, I used to see this the whole time, and I said to him, I think, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I think you're, you're, you're being rehumanized by the Holy Spirit. I think your heart is tender. You. In a way that before it was cold and it was to use Ezekiel imagery, you know, you have you have replaced God. Has replaced the heart of stone with the heart of flesh, and you have become resensitized to what is actually a violation of your safety, you know, and all the rest of it. And so that that was just to, you know, you're not becoming soft or losing it or depressed or whatever we might be, but like, not because of that. It's actually a positive sign that you're shaking, that you're on, you know, tearing up, and that you're feeling really quite anxious about it, because you should be, because you could have died a minute ago. And in telling that story, I have completely forgotten the question you asked. I'm sorry,
Joshua Johnson:just the communal aspect that we're talking about, what does it look like to bring people out of community, and you're talking about a counterfeit community. So,
Pete Portal:right? So someone once said to me, never attempt to help somebody out of a gang unless you've got something better to offer them in replacement. You know, so and that makes absolute sense, of course, like if the response, if their response to the agony of their life was to find a collective where that promised them security and belonging, and as imperfect as a gang is that was all they could find, then you better be sure that in in getting them to leave the gang, that You have something better to offer them in return. And so what we are realizing is that in the home we're running for young men, is that we need to observe certain rites of passage in the same way in a redemption, I suppose, of the counterfeit kind of rites of passage in a gang of shoot or stab your way up in crew 62 the name of our house for the guys like, you know, you work your way up through time, yes, but through trust, through commitment to others and the daily program, through responsibility. And you know, you get little like, you get like, a wristband, you get a t shirt, you get a track suit. Finally, at the end, and you actually work your way into the center of community, not dissimilar, I suppose, from a mass, a monastic model. So trying to take some of the wisdom of the monastic model as well as the lived experience of gang models, and put that into a into a collective kind of brothers seeking sobriety through the Holy Spirit and faith in Jesus together, is, is, is everything, actually. And you know it's all those cliches will have heard back in youth group. You know that if you remove one coal from the fire, then it grows colder, quicker. And, you know, cliches, for a reason. It's absolutely true. And we see it over and over again that guys who leave early, before the program's up before really that they're they've got the, the at least, just the sort of first level of freedom and healing they need, like, will go, will go back to old things and destructive behaviors, you know shockingly quickly,
Joshua Johnson:I know you've seen you've seen God move in incredible ways while you're there in your life, through what you have been doing, but you've also had deep suffering and grief and sorrow. You've lost people that you were close to and that you've walked with. What's the dichotomy there? How? How do you how do we reckon with the place where, yes, God is doing and supernatural things are occurring, and it's incredibly freeing to see some of this move, and then there's this place. On the other hand, there's such a deep loss and grief and suffering. How do we walk through that faithfully?
Pete Portal:Well, I think it's recognizing that wherever humans involved, wherever humans are involved, there is a limitless propensity to mess things up. And wherever God's involved, there's a limitless propensity to redeem and transform. And so you've got those two realities going on the entire time. So it's it's celebrating someone if they get instantly delivered off the withdrawal pains of heroin or crystal meth, which we have seen, but it's worth saying, you know, yes, we've seen that a lot, but we've also seen relapse, and we've also seen non miraculous deliverance from those things that someone's just made bloody minded choices to get up each day and not use, you know. And actually, I think the key for me in this is the verse in Philippians, Philippians 310 where Paul says, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing and his sufferings. You. And so for Paul, for Paul, knowing Christ is characterized by these two things, both resurrection power, so the supernatural, sovereign work of God, and also the proximity to pain and and sharing in Jesus' sufferings and and for us, I think so often in our churches, those seem as like it's a pick or choose one or the other. You know, the revivalists and the Charismatics would say, I want the resurrection power and the the activists or the, you know, whatever would say, well, we're choosing participatory suffering. And for Paul, he says, Well, the key to knowing Christ is both of those things together, which then also then end up with, you know, the end of that verse, it says, becoming like him in his death. You know the thing, the thing about the life that Jesus offers us in John 10, he says, You know, I've come to give you life in its fullness, abundant life, and we're like yes, and then for the next, that whole passage, the way he conceptualizes abundance and fullness of life is the Good Shepherd laying down his life for his sheep. Over and over again, he talks about laying down his life for others. And so what we've got to recognize is that the fullness of life that he calls us to is found again, paradoxically, in giving up our lives for others, and so he will empower us supernaturally to see certain miracles we could never have achieved or done on our own, humanly Speaking. So, you know, I'm thinking of deliverances, or, yeah, healing from drug addiction, or the supernatural provision of resources, or, you know, praying for somebody and then their body being healed, or whatever it might be. We've we prayed for a number of dead bodies and never seen anyone physically raised from the dead yet, but we also, we also believe that, you know, loving your neighbor is as supernatural as raising the dead, or at least it should be, because it needs to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so I think, I think the dichotomy that we see in the church around revivalism and activism, or supernatural resurrection power and participatory suffering, they can it's not that they only make sense, but they make best sense when they're together, is what I think. And they kind of complement each other. And as I say that that is what we we see. We see that, you know, it's a bit like God is first called El ROI, you know, the God who sees me by is it Hagar in in in the desert, and she's at her wits end, and she has this revelation that God sees her and is with her. Now he needs to be the God who sees us first, el ROI, in order to be Jehovah Rapha or Jehovah Jireh, he can't heal me or provide for me if he doesn't first see me. And I think that's that, that's the that's the key thing with all of this, is the participatory suffering and sharing in that with Jesus and truly seeing people is the prerequisite for seeing the supernatural turn up in their life, in your life, and God doing something that we ordinarily
Joshua Johnson:couldn't, I think in a lot of our conversation, I mean, you've talked about your freedom is caught up in the freedom of the people around you that yeah, talked just now. And the resurrection power and suffering actually are together and go hand in hand. In America, it's really pronounced that we live in a in culture wars where yeah, one side is good, the other side is bad, and and there is no like coming together, on on anything, and I know, and it's a anytime you go into a community, you're a part of a community, you can easily get into some binaries. You can get into some black and white thinking like, this is all bad, this is all good. How do we reckon with these culture wars, and how do we reckon with this dichotomy of polarization into a place where we can actually start to come together, so that we there's a reciprocity that's happening with each other?
Pete Portal:Yeah, well, it's interesting. You say this a couple of weeks ago, I was, I was in America, and I flew into Oklahoma, and had five days there, and then I flew from Oklahoma to San Francisco, and so you and in both those places, in Oklahoma, I was hearing about how awful the progressive left were, and you know this and this and this. And then you go to San Francisco, and you're chatting to people, and they go. My goodness, you're in Oklahoma. How is that, you know, you know, living in the past or whatever. And you've got, on the one hand, you know cowboy hats and Donald Trump, and on the other hand, you know driverless cars and tech tycoons. And it just, it felt absolutely trippy. So, and I guess, epitomized some of what you're talking about, I think, I think the big, a big part of being the church need, yeah, but a chapter in the book is actually on the culture wars, and it's on being a faithful witness in the culture wars, and is recognizing that, at the end of the day, what if everyone is just trying to do their best, you know? What if we're not all malicious, conniving, terrible, Satan fueled whatevers just because we disagree with someone else, yeah. What if we're actually just trying to muddle our way through the world and the complexity of the world the best we know how? What if we're just trying to follow Jesus as faithful, as faithfully as we know now, part of the cultural thing, I think, one of, one of the things, though, that I would push back on with, with something I see in particularly the American church, and only certain parts of it, it's got to be said, Is this, like desire to kind of invade and occupy systems, you know, so What? What? What? What has been called the the seven mountains mandate, and the idea, of course, being to reduce it to a bit of a straw man argument, but nonetheless, a valid critique, I think, is that, you know, we need to invade and occupy areas and spheres of influence in society in order to display the humility and love of Jesus. You know, it just it, just it seems, yeah, yeah. And somehow we'll usher in the Second Coming and the billion souls harvest, if we do that now. Now the interesting thing is, if one reads Isaiah, 40, you know he, he talks about the second coming of the Lord, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed when Make straight the path of the Lord cry out in the wilderness, every mountain will be laid made low, and every value will be raised up. And I think this could be a really unitive thing for people on different sides of the culture war, that if we recognize that, far from trying to climb mountains of influence, to quote, take society for Jesus or whatever, what if we instead of having a seven mountains mandate, we had a seven valleys mandate, where we said, well, let us try and infiltrate or rather than invade, what About pervade? I think that's probably a better word. What If the Church was to pervade the seven valleys of society? And if we were then what might they be? Well, they might be slums and psychiatric wards and old people's homes and those without houses and refugee camps. And, you know, the list goes on like, what if we united in our prophetic influence in society, rather than over society on a seven valleys mandate that we can all agree surely would be very Christ like, and would, I think as as as it pans out, would would see the church actually wielding a lot more influence in society than trying to climb mountains of influence to kind of legislate, quote, Christian laws. And I think that that could be a really exciting place for the left and the right to meet.
Joshua Johnson:Give me some hope from your experience in Cape Town, as we know, you know, South Africa apartheid state. And so you're working in places where at one point, like there was just subjugation, like we're just going to put you in a little box over here, and small little apartments together. And now, as it is open, how are valleys being raised in Cape Town in the aftermath of what has been going on to actually seed a different type of Kingdom work and kingdom life? Is there hope through what you have seen in Cape Town? Well, I
Pete Portal:think, I think that wherever you look, you find what you're looking for. If you're if you have a an inherently cynical stance towards the world, you will find things that will confirm that one of the things that we have been running over the last couple of years, we stopped for a little hiatus, but we're going to start again in the new year, is a monthly worship and prayer gathering called Kingdom Come rather unoriginally named. But, you know, Christians and the things we name our events are always a little unoriginal, aren't they? But and what we what we wanted to do was gather and pray for mannenberg At first, and then what we began to realize was that actually people. From all over the city were coming to mandenburg to pray, not just for mannenberg, but for the rest of the city and and we had old white, you know, men in their 70s who would have been absolutely the beneficiaries of apartheid and all of that sort of thing, weeping at the front, testifying to how they thought if they came to mannenberg, they would find a bunch of poor people, and actually confessing that what they have found is the riches of Jesus in this place. And it confirmed to me something Jackie Pullinger once said to us. She said, Pete, you've got to get the rich to be jealous of the poor. That she said, We'll unlock a whole bunch of things. And that evening, when that man cried into that mic in a very non 70 year old white dude way, I thought, Ah, it's just beginning. 15 years in. We're just beginning to see rich people flocking to mannenberg, not to hand out hugs, opinions or food, but to confess and weep and pray and worship together and and we would see that month in, month out. And yeah, so even as I'm talking on that, we really need to start doing that again. There's, there's, I think it's there's, there's a readiness, there's a willingness, there's a desire in Cape Town, which is the most segregated city in South Africa, which is the most economically unequal country on Earth. And so when you put it like that, you're like, of course, there would be, of course, deep down, we long to live in a state of shalom and in a state of nothing broken, nothing missing, and if you're living behind your electric fence with your armed response and your big guard dog and your panic buttons and all the rest of it like I don't judge you for that, but I do think that God wants to free you From the prison you've incarcerated yourself in and I think you might find some freedom somewhere like mannenberg. And that would be classic God, wouldn't it? Because, in the same way that people said about Nazareth, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Well, of course, Jesus came out of Nazareth. I'm not suggesting for a moment that you know the second coming will be a mannenberg, but I don't see any reason why not but, but I do think the thing that we hear over and over again about mannenberg is nothing good can come out of mannenberg. And over and over again we see that to just be, not true, not people deliberately lying, but just people ignorant. I think of the true riches of the transformative presence of God in His Spirit, in the world, you know, the people the world puts last. So, yeah, that's, that's something that just gives me a lot of hope and a lot of satisfaction.
Joshua Johnson:Oh, that's a beautiful story. I love that. I'm swelling with hope that can, it can happen. That's, that's beautiful, that's so good. Can you tell me, what do you think success is in the kingdom of God, and where do we get success wrong?
Pete Portal:Yeah, success in the kingdom of God is not what you achieve, it's who you become. It's refusing to define your life through endeavors that others would quantify as quote successful. It's recognizing the myth that you are worth what others applaud you for. It is recognizing that adding zeros to your bank balance or online followers or church numbers or whatever it might be, is not necessarily even a sign that God's on anything. I mean, someone once said to me, you know, like, unless you've when, if you're growing, unless you're growing in the presence of Jesus and His love for the poor, then you haven't actually grown at all. You've just swollen. And swelling is a sign of ill health, not health. It is. It is recognizing that the the world is growing sick, pursuing the wrong sort of success, and that the life and the teachings of Jesus always showed up in a generative contradiction to the powers of the prevailing status quo and there and that hasn't changed. And so we are to be people not who just swear less, drink less, sleep around less, you know, hopefully living some kind of vanilla version of an otherwise fairly conventional worldly life, but there are people who live a completely different circuit board and recognize, as I say, that something can look the same on the outside, two different things could look exactly the same on the outside, and one is fueled by the calling of. God and the other is fueled just by a desire to be seen as worthwhile and recognized in the eyes of others, and therefore external appearances really don't give us much clue as to how truly successful somebody is, because success is ultimately just faithfulness to what God's asked you to do. So
Joshua Johnson:good Pete, couple quick questions, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Pete Portal:Do it all again and risk more. Step out more. Yeah, lean into like God. God is not panicked or disillusioned. He's not in some crisis about you know, just lean into him. Don't hurt. Try and hurt as few people as you can, as you do, there's no you know, Don't be reckless, but definitely step out if there's some kind of inkling, some kind of sense in your spirit, like follow it and connect the dots.
Joshua Johnson:Excellent. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend,
Pete Portal:I've actually, I've been what I've been reading Matthew Perry's autobiography, you know, the guy who was Chandler Bing and friends, he obviously died recently of a ketamine overdose. I think it was. And just reading what Eve, even his stories of God showing up in visitations in his kitchen, and the grace of God over someone's life, he spent $9 million on recovery from addiction, $9,000,000.65 attempts at getting sober. And yet, how, in the depths of it, God met him in some supernatural ways and and we would never have known that if he hadn't written that down. So I'm immensely, immensely thankful the other thing I'm reading at the moment a book called the critical journey, which is really about trying to navigate the second stage, or sort of middle age, of life a little better. I'm turn 40 next year, and I'm kind of planning my midlife crisis around about now, so I'm just trying to trying to find some books that will help me navigate that as faithfully as possible.
Joshua Johnson:That's good. It's fun. Midlife crisis is fun. You'll enjoy it. Yeah. All right. Pete, how can people go get your book? And where would you like to point people to
Pete Portal:so you can, for us listeners, you can pre order, stop trying to be successful on Amazon, and you just Google it and it's just available to pre order anywhere. Side note, they had to change the title of it because the American publisher, in a zoom call with me, said, Pete, I'm sorry to say it, but unsuccess is the cardinal sin in America, and no book with that word on the cover will sell. Oh, the irony anyway. But you can pre order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble copy,
Joshua Johnson:and I bought your book how to how to be unsuccessful. So, you know, yeah,
Pete Portal:you can buy, yeah,
Joshua Johnson:there's nothing you can now, I'm just saying it's not just Americans that'll say, I'm never gonna buy something like that. I'm an American. I bought it. Yeah,
Pete Portal:there you go. The funny thing is, you go to England and someone says, What's your book called? He says, called how to be unsuccessful. And you get an eye roll and a snort. And they said, Well, you should have come to me if you wanted stories on that, you know, and and there's this kind of inherent recognition in the UK that none of us are living up to the lives we would love to be. But you can. You can also, I've got a podcast, the unsuccessful podcast, which is on Spotify and Apple. And you can find out more about the ministry Tree of Life, which is a 24/7 prayer community in mandenburg at Tree of life.org.za, so lots there for people.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, last Sunday, we had our faith fun Sunday at church. And I always warms my heart when it has Tree of Life mandenburg on the list of of places we give to and support and be a part of. And so I'm thankful that, as you know, you know, you have this good relationship with Adam Julie at Napa, and we, we get to be play a small little part in our whole community here in Kansas City of what you were doing there, and we are always with you, and we're praying for you, and we're putting some of our money behind you as well. And so we just say we're so thankful for what you're doing and being with you and praying with you in the middle of it. Well,
Pete Portal:back at you. We're eternally grateful for your guys partnership, and I mean, Adam and Julie have walked with us for best part of 15 years now, navigating all the ins and outs of pretty much everything you and I have been talking about in this last hour. So a lot of love for you guys at Nava, thanks.
Joshua Johnson:Pete really, really enjoyed this conversation. I think this is an important one as we navigate what does it look like to be successful in the kingdom of God? How do we. We enter into places which are our culture wars, or enter into a place where it looks like there is no hope, but there is actually hope in the kingdom. There's hope with Jesus in what you're doing. Thank you for the good work you're doing. And this conversation, I really, really enjoyed it. So thank you.
Pete Portal:Thanks so much for having me. You
