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The Twice-as-Good Challenge, by Amy Bost Henegar

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This week, we begin a four-week series written by four different women who preach, teach, and minister in traditions where they are among the first to serve their congregations in such capacities. Their experiences will inform the series.

Amy Bost Henegar is a Minister for the Manhattan Church of Christ in New York City and a Doctor of Ministry student at New York Theological Seminary. She spent the first part of her career in hospital chaplaincy and has been in congregational ministry since 2001. She is married to Matt and they have five kids. They live right outside of New York City.

Twentieth century feminist Charlotte Whitton is quoted as saying “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

Any woman making her way in a traditionally male field knows this sentiment. I have spent two decades working as a female minister in a fellowship that is in the process of ongoing transition regarding gender roles, and I have heard this message over and over again – that I need to be twice as good as the men if I want to be taken seriously. While the message has certainly come from other people, both directly as well as through subtle implications, the loudest voice insisting on my need to be “twice as good,” is in my own head. Every insecurity I have regarding my calling and skills for ministry coalesce around this simple mandate: You have to be twice as good.

I cannot pretend that women are the only ones who hear this message. Certainly many minorities in our society receive the same messages. It may be gender, race, educational background or life history – many of us believe that for some reason or another we are going to be judged by a higher standard. This belief has far-reaching effects and has the power to significantly shape who we are as people and professionals.

On the one hand, the challenge to be twice as good can be constructive. Women in ministry do well to realize that standards are high, and we must be prepared. We are going to be scrutinized and we are going to be judged, sometimes fairly and other times it will not be fair at all. The challenge to be twice as good compels us to become highly competent – go to seminary; continually read, study, listen, and learn; be diligent when it comes to prayer, Bible study, individual and corporate worship; and maintain a high standard of personal and professional ethics. If we realize we are going to be carefully scrutinized, we are motivated to remember these important practices.

On the other hand, if we are not careful, focusing our attention on being twice as good can be dangerous. You see, as women in ministry, we become skilled at standing up for ourselves and are well practiced in advocating for our place at the table. We have accepted this as an unavoidable part of taking on a traditionally male role. But deep down, underneath all of the striving and advocating, we know the truth. We know that Charlotte Whitton was wrong. It is not easy. It is in fact very difficult. And if we are not careful, the burden of trying to be twice as good has the potential to completely undermine our ministries.

I once heard a seminary professor challenge a group of ministers to have the deepest devotional lives of anyone in their congregation. He made an excellent point – that you don’t have any business helping people connect with God if you don’t have a practice of authentically connecting with God yourself. But I missed that point entirely. My focus immediately turned to the superlative in his admonition and I felt overwhelmed at the idea of needing to have the most impressive devotional life in the congregation. All of my doubts about my competence for ministry came racing to mind. “I’ll never be that person! I can barely get out of bed in time to get my kids to school – how can I get up even earlier to pray? I may as well give up because it’s just too much.” When we focus our attention on needing to be twice as good as everyone else, we will become discouraged. Perfectionism leads to burnout because the burden is just too heavy.

And while feeling overwhelmed or giving up would be tragic, what’s more dangerous is the theology underneath those feelings. If I hold myself to a standard of perfection, what does that say about my faith in God? If I need to work my fingers to the bone in order to be twice as good, then ultimately I am forgetting that it is God’s work and not mine. The Christian faith can only be truly known in the context of vulnerability. We are weak, fragile and broken. All of us. We are all in need of a savior. All of us. If we truly believe we have to be twice as good, we have forgotten that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.

Additionally, if we think we have to be twice as good, we have fallen into thinking that we are part of a competition. As much as our capitalist culture may urge us to view everything as a competition, we must remember that ministry is not. A competitive mindset divides us from each other and sets us up to be opponents rather than teammates. If I’m trying to be “the best,” then I am trying to be better than you, thus it is impossible to root for myself and you at the same time.It also places us in a competitive framework with regard to the church and the community. When we focus on our need to be twice as good, we are preoccupied with the way other people see us, continually competing in real and imagined battles. We end up isolated and starved for support and community.

There is no room for this type of competitive thinking in the work of the gospel. I like Karoline Lewis’s words from her book She: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Women in Ministry. “Once again, where you begin matters. If you enter into ministry from a starting place of competition, combat, and crusade, then your ministry will, by default, embody that ethos.”

So we have a dilemma. We must acknowledge that we live and work in the shadow of the twice as good challenge. But if we give it too much power in our lives, we risk undermining our effectiveness as ministers and suffering spiritual and emotional damage. So, as we do in many areas of our lives, we must dance in the ambiguity. There are times when we need to look someone straight in the eye and say, “I am an incredible preacher,” all the while shaking in our boots and trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit to make those words true. But in the quiet of our prayer lives and the safety of our closest relationships, it is absolutely essential that we drop the charade, that we admit our fears, our weakness and failures, and that we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord will indeed lift us up.

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