How to be (Un)Successful: An unlikely guide to human flourishing

by Pete Portal

Nowadays it seems like everyone wants to be successful, but how many of us actually feel it?

We may know that true success is found in following the one who made us. And yet, in our increasingly polarised and comparison-rife world, many of us find our hearts yearning for an ever-elusive 'success': in money and power, in influence and accolades.

It is time for us to remember that success is attainable - not in what we have but how we live.

This book invites you to recognise the beauty and complexity of the world we live in and how we, individually and collectively, may have conformed our faith in Jesus to simple consumer culture and cultural preferences. It is an opportunity to redefine success, choosing love over efficiency, depth over volume and real friendship over cold transactions.

Jesus' life and teaching are the perfect antidote for a world growing sick with the wrong sort of success. And, he invites us again to experience a success that truly satisfies our souls.

Genres: Christian, Faith, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2023

Reviews

[Chase Borchardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

so so so well contextualized and nuanced. provokes a healthy kind of tension and wrestle

[Jonny Hosking · Rating 5 out of 5]

Portal writes with such honesty and courage; this should be on the shelves of every pastor, preacher, Church leader in the world. Finally someone who can translate the Bible's word into a modern context. Must read for Christians and non-Christians alike.

[Mina Hong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fact that this book is not talked about more is absolutely beyond me.

Prompted by the Holy Spirit to go deeper in this season of life, I was caught in my pride assuming this book would merely reiterate what I already knew—that the humble and lowly life of Jesus is true “success,” not the culturally prevalent corporate-ladder-climbing upward mobility arc so many of us have internalized as the path to contentment. And honestly it was exactly that—but also so much more.

I’m scribing chapter by chapter reflections and then ending with a “high-level” analysis at the end (for myself and my poor memory, so I can actually explain why I loved this book when someone asks).

Chapter 1: Success is Following God’s Calling Over Good Ideas
- The empty platitudes of our culture are not the end all be all. They just can’t be! Life is too complex, messy, and unpredictable for sayings like, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life” to hold any true weight, let alone offer real fulfillment or success.
- I want to give myself wholly to His absolute best for me.
- Walking the narrow road of obedience to God’s voice—for the sake of obedience, not blessing. The only metric that matters → obedience to God.
- In the midst of forced exile, while people wrestled with the supposed “goodness of God” and the lack of breakthrough in prayer, God speaks through Jeremiah: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
- Jeremiah gives clear instructions for flourishing in a place they never wanted to be. It involves “making a home, toiling the earth, cultivating beauty, celebrating love and marriage, raising the next generation to know the ways of God.” Now—I am well aware that starting a garden and marrying some mediocre man simply to procreate is neither the call nor the fullness of God for my life. But I am drawn back to the foundational values of stewarding the earth well and given a renewed vision of marriage—not as a vehicle for comfort or gain, but as a means of honoring and glorifying Him. And this, I think, is what Portal considers (un)success.
- “Showing everyone visible fruit does not make you successful. What makes you successful is doing the will of God.”
- This book is starting to make me question my romanticized projections of calling versus reality.

Chapter 2: Success is Pursuing Relationship Over Relevance
- This chapter touched my underlying, persistent, secret yearning for obscurity—or perhaps more truly, my yearning to desire obscurity. The desire to be all right with going quietly unnoticed, to thrive in the confidence that the Lord notices all.
- The part of this chapter that challenged me the most was Portal’s treatment of relationships in the context of evangelism. He unmasks the shallow paradigm of evangelism as transaction—serving someone food for example but requiring them to recite a prayer before receiving it—and pushes us past the need/solution model that commodifies people. Instead, he emphasizes mutuality: reciprocal relationship where blessings flow both ways.
- Up to this point, I had thought of street evangelism and evangelism through “doing life together” as mutually exclusive practices. But I am beginning to see the space where they converge: intentional friendship. It is in genuine relationship that we truly see people. And it is within the trust of friendship that we can finally introduce them to my Friend, Jesus.
- Proximity to power has often masqueraded as proof of the “success” or “effectiveness” of ministry—a lie I have subconsciously clung to in order to validate my own calling and actions.
- “Deep relationship with God and each other will seem slow and inefficient. Relevance doesn’t have time for such tension…”
- To be committed to the local—this community, this body, this set of relationships, this particular place where God has called me—over the lure of the global. As someone who feels called to the nations, this chapter confronted me with a difficult question: Am I secretly dissatisfied with the “smallness” of the work in New York City? (Smallness in my perception, though in truth it is anything but small.) Do I carry restlessness toward the local because I imagine that serving the nations is somehow a nobler cause, more deserving of recognition, a higher-profile platform? The answer is yes.
- I want to sow deeply and wholeheartedly.
- God cares for the global Church, but Portal warns of the danger when restlessness in our present circumstances drives us to conquer new territory while our local communities languish. Our longing for relevance on a grand stage can blind us to the holy labor of tending where God has placed us presently.

Chapter 3: Success is Growing in Depth Over Volume
- “More isn’t always a sign of growth. You can grow in influence, have more people, more money, more buildings—but if you haven’t grown in the presence of Jesus among you and in His love for the poor, then what you’re talking about isn’t healthy growth at all. It’s just swelling. And swelling is what happens when something is infected or broken.”
- The laser versus light bulb metaphor was interesting - Jesus is a laser: narrow, deep, penetrating. Not a diffuse, broad light trying to illuminate everything superficially.
- “God is less concerned with counting Christians and more interested in weighing them.” — Dallas Willard
- Revelation > strategy

Chapter 4: Success is Transforming Over Transferring—What Will You Do with Your Pain?
- “Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it.” — C.S. Lewis
- “I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” — James Baldwin
- Addiction is often a sincere attempt to solve the problem of pain, yet society too readily frames it as a moral failure.
- The Church must integrate trauma-informed care! We need spaces to talk about past pain or current attachments, freeing ourselves from falsely “sorted” personas and sanctifying hypocrisy. Without this, trauma can leave people—myself included—cloaked in shame, feeling isolated in their ongoing struggle with sin and broken patterns.
- “The collision between God’s good news and our places of unraveling becomes the basis of our testimony.” — Jose Humphrey, pastor in East Harlem
- Trauma Release Exercises = scientific research + spiritual manifestations (noting this as something I would like to research more later on).

Chapter 5: Success is Being a Faithful Presence in the Culture Wars
- Moral ecology: collective factors (family, education, religion, etc.) that form us and from which we then shape and influence the world around us. Moral ecologies not only define the individual, they can also define eras and civilizations.
- Identity capital: the collection of personal assets we build that add value to who we are and how we move through the world.
- Tough mind and tender heart. DIFFERENT from “soft-minded.” MLK defines the soft-minded person as one who fears change, clings to the status quo, and wants to freeze life in the gripping yoke of sameness. (I am soft-minded 🙃)
- Tough mind and tender heart embodied → “God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.”
- You don’t go to Heaven; Heaven comes to you! To be a faithful witness.
- I want to devote my life to God’s people in the “seven valleys.”

Chapter 6: Success is Living in Power and Participation
- “Justice and supernatural power are connected… Works of mercy and works of power belong together. We are the people of miracles and mercy!”
- “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” — St. Augustine
- In his final chapter, Portal addresses the raw pain that comes from hope deferred—feeling as though God has lost the enthusiasm He once showed, or has moved on to “more important” things. He shares two stories: one of a long wait for the adoption of their daughter where Portal and his family is able to say that the wrestle of holding resurrection power and participatory suffering in constant tension was indeed worth it while also highlighting a story of a young man they had come under their care but was removed by the government into a broken system where they contended for a miracle and they never saw one - or at least not yet. I appreciate that he holds both tensions neither more nor less "holy"—removing any legalistic shame that can often insidiously attach itself to unfulfilled prayers.
- “Unanswered questions, confusing delays, sadness, frustration—none of this precludes the power of God at work.”

Personal Reflections:

This book was an amalgamation of countless interests that have recently sprung to life for me—it felt serendipitous! And yet, I know all things are purposeful and intentional through Jesus. Thank you Lord! Mentions of Hudson Taylor stirred afresh my sense of personal calling. References to the Moravians carried added weight, simply because of the reverence my own pastor (whom I deeply respect) holds for them. And then—Henri Nouwen!

The Nouwen references felt particularly tender, even prophetic. "The Wounded Healer" remains my favorite book of the year thus far, and learning more about his personal context and experience serving alongside the L’Arche community felt both kindred and Spirit-confirmed. I cannot wait to dive into more of his works this year.

I feel Portal so valiantly defends the gospel—and all its implications—while moving deftly between the tensions of life as we actually live it. There is, indeed, so much tension. My own tensions vacillate me into fits of fear, futility, and hopelessness at times. What I so appreciate about Portal’s perspective is this: he acknowledges the tension fully, but then insists that we are not striving for a false peace on one side or the other, nor living from revelation to revelation as though strung along. Rather, we are to desire more of God’s revelation—God’s perspective—of who He says I am in the tension. MLK says so beautifully, “Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.” Only through the Lord is fruitful harmony possible.

In his defense of the gospel, Portal is consistently calling the reader to not cheapen the gospel—to go beyond cheap theology of grace or platitude half-truths, but instead to wrestle deeply with its full implications, embody its radical demands, and allow it to reshape every corner of your life.

Portal is a man of God first, and a sociologist second (at least in my eyes). This book is as much about God as it is about race, class, and socioeconomic status—realities that God cares about deeply and that the Church must reckon with directly. He brings a sociological lens to the implications of the gospel, creating a call to action that is both realistic and rooted in God’s character. Portal lives at the rare intersection of being deeply awake to justice and deeply rooted in Jesus’ redemption. I also deeply respect Portal’s candid awareness of his white privilege, thoughtfully contextualized within his geo political and economic realities.

One example (among many) I found intriguing through Portal’s sociological lens was his elaboration on the concept of “air space” and how it can pull on our ego—or potentially narcissistic shadow—toward a desire for influence. He critiques discipleship conducted in frictionless, untethered spaces, which often exclude marginalized groups without access to the internet. As he writes: “The Scriptures convey physical space as being inherently relational, and this is conducive to divine encounter. There is a dynamic interrelationship between place and story, people and God. Lose place, lose story, lose encounter.”

This book was a just-because gift from my beloved Julia <3 My peak love language. I’m still basking in the kind thought and generosity of this unexpected gift :’)

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn’t an ‘It’s okay to be a loser’ book. It is right and good to want to be successful, and it’s not wrong to pursue success as an ambition. The difficulty arises when we have an extremely narrow view of what it means to be ‘successful’ and when that view is not informed by God. Pete Portal’s exploration of what it means to be successful comes alive as he taps into his own life’s experience, the wisdom of Christian writers and theologians, and the living example set by Jesus. This extremely readable book is provocative, encouraging, and challenging. That means there’s something within these pages for virtually everyone, no matter their age or stage of life.

[Cat Randle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, My Goodness! What a book!
The book is simple, full of big challenging ideas and love and it is a must-read as one of the tools you'll need to be successful in the prince of the airs world but a loving servant in God's world. Or to put it in simple terms, if you want to be like Jesus, then look at this book. It will help.

Pete Portal and his wife are missionaries in Maneburg a black township in South Africa. He's white so there is intergenerational trauma to deal with and drugs and gangs. He has a mission and he has come to realise what is important in this new age of culture wars, old systemic oppression, racism, intergenerational trauma black-and-white thinking and environmental challenges.

He walked us through his journey and thought processes and it is what I have been thinking for a while about church, society and my life in particular- part of the reason I walked away from social media. As a privileged middle-class white woman in NZ, this is a big challenge. But it's doable. Or rather God helps.

This is how this book impacted my life.
I have been struggling on my Christian journey for quite a while. I've been in pain, numb, struggling to be kind and also dealing with my negative uncharitable thoughts.

In other words being a traumatised, broken, human at the bottom of society's food chain. God has been sending word, but none of it clicked because I was looking at everything in the world's way.

I also struggle with a lot of hypocrisy and the influx of world culture and corporate culture into God's Kingdom. Since God put me in Johnsonville. God has been taking me on a path which leads to this book. I feel like I'm in training.

I picked it up because I didn't feel like a success. I feel like I've failed as a parent, I've been sidelined as an older woman in the world of work and the world of what my moral ecology defines as society or rather rich society, I've been subject to agism at what little work I can find, and in the world view, I'm a failure.

But I'm not, and right now I can change my life direction towards being unsuccessful and working to break out God's kingdom in this world, which is what I want to do. I couldn't get my head around what my heart was longing for. It turns out that what I long for is what is needed and God's word in my life. Community. My first and last love.

When I walked into my current church, their sermon series rang a bell. It focused on getting closer to God. I know I need to do that every day and this little community is trying to do just that. This book was a recommendation as a result of the sermon and you NEED to read it.

I am going to get a digital copy of this book, yep it's a deep keeper. It's a buy a copy and give it to your friends. Its a once in a once-in-a-generation read.

This book is good for Christians, theologians, spiritual activists, Christian leaders, religious teachers and teachers of religion and teachers who teach RE, philosophers and privileged people full stop. It will be a great and challenging bible study too.

[Brian S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Important Counter to the Religion of Success

The air we breath in “developed” nations (and maybe less-developed nations too) is infused with the toxin of success. By which I mean, the definition of a “successful life” is a personalized recipe that includes ingredients such as material prosperity, comfort (or at least freedom from pain), pleasure, influence/power, fame, and personal autonomy. The relentless pursuit, and certainly the attainment, of such “success” is poisonous to the soul and a powerful antidote against the abundant life promised by Jesus to His followers.

If you do not follow Jesus, don’t bother with this book; it will be nonsense. If you do—or would at least consider it—my 5-star rating is for you. Mr Portal’s style is personal, warm, vulnerable—and also wise and uncompromising. He has the “street cred,” we might say, to write this book because he has chosen to live and love others in a township community in Cape Town, South Africa that is ravaged by gangs, drugs, and crime. Yet, this book doesn’t even have a hint of self-important “look at me for the heroic work I’m doing;” it’s all about looking at Jesus and what following The Way might really mean. I’m deeply challenged and simultaneously encouraged by the witness of a Christian whose goal is “to know [Jesus] and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings” (Philippians 3.10, CSB).

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"How to be (Un)Successful" by Pete Portal is a refreshingly honest and humorous guide to navigating life's pitfalls. Portal's witty writing style and relatable anecdotes make this book a delightful read for anyone tired of traditional self-help clichés.

Rather than offering generic success formulas, Portal takes a candid approach, sharing his own mishaps and lessons learned along the way. The book feels like a friendly chat with a wise friend who's been through it all and isn't afraid to spill the beans. From career missteps to personal fiascos, Portal covers it all with a blend of wisdom and self-deprecating humor.

What sets this book apart is its emphasis on embracing failure as a crucial part of the journey toward success. Portal challenges the conventional notion of success and encourages readers to find fulfillment in the messy, unpredictable moments of life.

If you're tired of the same old success advice and crave a dose of reality served with humor, "How to be (Un)Successful" is the perfect pick. It's a breath of fresh air in the self-help genre, reminding us that success is often found in the most unexpected places.

[Grant Gunston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pete's book is readable and down-to-earth, born out of lived experience.

Some highlights for me are:
* Don't do hit and run mission - build community in the difficult place
* If church is going to embrace and walk alongside broken people, there are no short cuts
* If you feel a little numb with the state of the world, then one of the ways to feel again is to use your [prophetic] imagination. What would it look like for my neighbourhood, or that issue to be transformed?
* Knowing Christ in the power of the resurrection, and participation in His sufferings (Phil 3:10) go together in living in a missional way. "We'll end up blowing up on power alone and burning out on compassion alone."

Read it. Pete encourages us to let God do the deeper work in ourselves, and then live that new life out with others, from that better place.

[Mason Rothwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will certainly be a yearly read for me moving forward. Deep within us, we each aspire to be successful in some capacity. Pete Portal does a phenomenal job redefining true success through the lens of Jesus’ life and teaching—portraying a level of success that truly satisfies our souls. If you want to accept the invitation of learning to define success not by what you do or achieve but how you live, this book is for you.

[Pam Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the concepts. Pete reminds us in this book how Jesus way was a different kind of success. Opposite of the cultural definition of success. Servant leadership. Going deep instead of wide. Reminder to ask yourself Who am we becoming? Definitely caused some introspection and practical ideas to put the concepts. Great reflection questions after each chapter.

[Arthur Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant book at communicating the upside down kingdom of Jesus and the power in choosing to serve others instead of trying to benefit ourselves!
This should be a core text in leadership courses and as people prepare to lead large organisations or churches, and significantly as the temptation to grow platforms and following increases.

[Brandon Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic Read!

This book was challenging in the best ways. Particularly chapters 4-6 were incredibly thoughtful and stirring, but also filled with calls to be courageous in our faith. Highly recommend this for anyone following Christ!

[Deb Den · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pete Portal suggests alternative parameters for what success actually means. Such ideas as relationship over relevance, depth over volume, transforming over transferring are some of the issues he discusses. He also digs into ways the church might influence culture/social issues more successfully.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-arc. I loved this book - it’s well written but more importantly profoundly counter-cultural and prophetic in its call for us to redefine what success looks like in the Christian life.

[Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

British Christ follower with a ministry in the townships of South Africa and connected to the 24/7 prayer movement. Good reflection on a life that flourishes!

[Eric Reidsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts were very good. A lot of it I didn’t understand.

[Michael Hillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used this and the accompanying video for a 6 week study course. Written from a challenging South African context.