How might you answer the following questions:
- Do you move in quickly to advise and fix things lest they fall apart?
- Do you have difficulty allowing others to struggle with their own problems?
- Do you find that, in the long run, it is simply easier to do things yourself?
- Do you say yes when you prefer to say no, even if you are overloaded?
- Do you struggle to trust others to do as good a job as you would?
- Do you not like asking for help because you don’t want to burden them?
If your answer is yes to three or more, you probably suffer from a case of overfunctioning, i.e. doing for others what they can and should do for themselves.
In this podcast I invite you into my personal journey of slowly breaking patterns and behaviors that reflected my overfunctioning posture as a pastor for the first seventeen years of my leadership. In those years, I often interfered with an essential process of God (often through pain) of maturing his people. Unknowingly, I limited their development. Moreover, I lost sight of God’s unique call for my own life and suffered the negative consequences of trying to run God’s world for him.
After considering the examples of Moses (Exodus 18; Numbers 11) and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) as classic overfunctioners, I lay out the three steps I took, and continue to take, that help me stop overfunctioning. While they may unleash a bit of short-term chaos, you can rest assured that God will catch both you and those you lead.
Enjoy!
