FCLP 25 | The Difference Between Faith and Overfunctioning (Spiritual Gifts: Faith & Giving)

In this thoughtful leadership episode of the Female Church Leaders Podcast, Kadi Cole continues the Spiritual Gifts Summer Series by exploring two often-misunderstood gifts: faith and giving. This episode unpacks the difference between biblical faith and overfunctioning, while also reframing how leaders think about generosity, provision, and financial stewardship in the Church.

You’ll gain perspective on how these gifts strengthen ministry momentum, why they can create tension for leaders, and how understanding them more clearly can expand both trust and leadership effectiveness.

TIMESTAMPS

1:49 - Understanding the spiritual gift of faith 

3:15 - How to identify people with the gift of faith on your team 

4:30 - The difference between biblical faith and magical thinking 

5:51 - Warning signs of over-functioning disguised as faith 

7:49 - The spiritual gift of giving explained 

8:29 - Why the gift of giving is often misunderstood in church culture

Resources mentioned:

The Spiritual Gifts Leadership Toolkit: kadicole.com/spiritualgifts

Next Steps and Resources:

• Take the Quiz: Identify your growth gap with our Sticky Floor Quiz at femalechurchleaders.com.
• Join a Cohort: Be part of our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort for guided coaching and monthly Q&A with Kadi. Visit closingtheleadershipgap.com to learn more.
• Stay Connected: Follow us on Instagram @femalechurchleaders for daily encouragement and leadership tools.
• Spread the Word: If you found this episode helpful, please follow, rate, and share the podcast to help us reach more female church leaders.

Tune in and get ready to lead with clarity, strength, and joy. Your calling matters, and we're here to support you every step of the way!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Female Church Leaders Podcast, a weekly resource for women who love God, love the church, and are called to lead. I'm your host, Katie Cole, Church Leader, Autor, and Executive Coach. After more than 30 years in full-time ministry, Open as the only woman at the table, I understand how meaningful yet challenging your calling can be. That's why I created this podcast to remind you that you're not leading alone. Each week, I'll share practical tools, biblical insights, and honest encouragement for the real challenges female leaders face in ministry. So you can grow your skills, strengthen your faith, and lead with more confidence and joy without burning out or striving to prove yourself. We drop a new episode every Monday because Sunday is coming and you are gonna be ready for it.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Sometimes what gets praised as faith is actually overfunctioning. And sometimes what gets judged as materialism is actually the gift of generosity. The gift of faith is not denial, and the gift of giving is not greed. Both of these gifts are often misunderstood in the church, especially by leaders. If you're new to the podcast, we're in the middle of a summer series on the spiritual gifts, not focused on discovering your own gifts as much as learning how to identify, develop, and lead the gifts on your team more effectively. Because healthy ministry isn't built by asking everyone to lead the same way. It's built by recognizing how God uniquely wired people and then stewarding that well. So today, I want to help you recognize the spiritual gift of faith and the spiritual gift of generosity more clearly. Because when they are healthy and mature, they become incredibly powerful in the life of your team and in your church. So, first, the gift of faith. Someone with the gift of faith carries unusual confidence in God's direction, provision, and activity, even when circumstances feel uncertain or difficult. This gift sees obstacles clearly, but trusts God deeply anyway. And that distinction matters because this gift is not about pretending hard things aren't hard. It's not ignoring reality and it's not spiritualizing dysfunction. People with the gift of faith often move quickly when they believe God is leading. They require less external confirmation than others, and they carry deep confidence that God will provide what is needed along the way. Not because they are impulsive, but because they genuinely trust him and know his voice. You'll often hear people with this gift say things like, I just know God is in this, or I don't have every answer yet, but I believe we're supposed to move. Or we can trust God here. And when this gift is healthy, it creates courage in everyone around them. It helps teams move forward. They take risks, they trust God for big things, and they step into opportunities they may otherwise avoid. One of the clearest ways to identify this gift on your team is that they often move toward God-sized opportunities faster than other people are often comfortable with. They're not reckless, but they move confidently and easily. And over time, you'll see again and again that their faith was proved correct. They don't always need five rounds of confirmation or perfect clarity or endless discussions. They simply have unusual confidence when they sense God's direction. And then the results speak for themselves. Now, if you don't naturally carry this gift yourself, it can sometimes feel uncomfortable to lead someone with the gift of faith. And it may cause you to wonder: am I being irresponsible? Are we moving too quickly? Am I abdicating leadership if I trust their opinion over my own? But healthy leadership doesn't mean dismissing the gift of faith. It means learning how to partner with it wisely. You don't need to become someone with the gift of faith yourself. You simply need to learn how to recognize it and then access it when you need it. People with this gift will often help you as a leader move through fear faster. Stop overprocessing and learn to trust God enough to simply take the next step, especially in seasons where uncertainty is high. Now, there is an important caution here, because not everything people call, quote, faith is actually the spiritual gift of faith in action. Sometimes using that word can be a way to spiritually justify magical thinking. Magical thinking is a term that researchers and psychologists use to describe that unwavering conviction people often have that hope, desire, or positive belief alone can override reality, repeated patterns, or evidence. Magical thinking is not biblical faith. For example, staying in an unhealthy situation for years while ignoring repeated patterns, lack of accountability, or clear warning signs about character, and calling it, quote, faith that God is going to change the person is not the gift of faith. That is unhealthy magical thinking. Or continuing to carry responsibilities God never asked you to carry because you believe somehow everything will magically work out if you just try harder, pray harder, or stay longer. Again, that is not biblical faith. Biblical faith acknowledges reality clearly and then discerns whether God is actually asking you to stay, to go, to lead, wait, or if he's asking you to move on. And this distinction matters deeply for leaders, especially for female leaders, because many women have been shaped in environments that often reward overfunctioning. They reward carrying too much responsibility, believing the best despite repeated unhealthy patterns, or confusing exhaustion with faithfulness. And people with the gift of faith can especially drift into this if they're not careful. Because this gift naturally propels people into movement, into saying yes quickly, into believing big things are possible. Because with God, we know big things are possible. But maturity in this gift means learning the difference between what is God asking you to do and what you feel responsible to carry. Just because you can carry it doesn't mean God has asked you to. And if you are someone who needs more confirmation before moving forward, that doesn't mean you are less obedient. It may simply mean you simply don't have the gift of faith. Not every leader is designed to move forward with the same level of certainty or speed, and that's okay. But it does mean you need to access this gift when you need it. The gift of faith builds the church by helping teams move forward courageously, creating confidence in difficult seasons, and reminding people that God is still active and present even when we can't quite see him. Now, if this gift is missing from your team, you may notice some symptoms, things like hesitation around new opportunities. Fear is actually what is driving your decision making, difficulty taking big risks, or teams who easily stay overfocused on safety and certainty. The gift of faith helps the church and your team move forward when otherwise they would likely stay stuck. Now, let's talk about the gift of giving next. I believe this is one of the most overlooked and often misunderstood gifts in the church. When someone has the gift of giving, they joyfully and generously share their resources to advance God's work, but they also tend to have a unique ability to make money or to have resources in order to give it away. And often, like with many of the spiritual gifts, people with this gift don't recognize it in themselves easily, especially at first. Because many people simply think, oh, that big bonus at work just kind of happened. Or I wasn't even really trying to make money. Or I just worked hard and opportunities opened up for me that I had nothing to do with. And especially in many church cultures, some people with this gift quietly carry around a sense of guilt or embarrassment about their financial or material success. This is because sometimes Christian environments can unintentionally communicate that simplicity is more spiritual, that enjoying nice things is selfish or sinful, or financial success is a sign of disobedience or ungodly character. But people with the gift of giving or the gift of generosity often interact with resources differently. They simply think about money in a unique way. They naturally orient from a place of God's abundance rather than a mental framework of scarcity. People with this gift tend to enjoy more and highly value quality, beauty, experiences, generosity, and creating meaningful moments for others. And often they genuinely want other people to experience these kinds of things in the same way too. That's an important distinction because this gift is not marked simply by selfish accumulation or greed. It is marked by joyful generosity. They don't just have resources, they want to use those resources to bless and help others, to expand ministry, to create opportunities, and to meet real people's needs. And honestly, this gift has really challenged me personally as a leader. I grew up in the mountains of Montana with a single mom who worked as a secretary my whole life. Our version of splurging was Domino's pizza on a special occasion or garage sales on the weekends. But then I spent nearly 30 years doing ministry in Palm Beach County, Florida, which is one of the wealthiest communities in the country with one of the highest concentrations of private wealth in the world. And suddenly I was leading and ministering alongside millionaires and billionaires. And honestly, for a long time I felt really uncomfortable around that much wealth. Now, I knew the Bible instructed me as a leader not to give special treatment to people with money. But because I was so cautious about that, I actually spent less time ministering to and caring for people with the gift of giving. Meanwhile, somehow in my mind, I was justified to spend intentionally more time with people who were gifted with the gift of leadership or the gift of intercession or teaching or shepherding. I could see clearly how those people had direct lines into the advancement of our church. And so I spent a lot of time with them. And then one day I just remember the Holy Spirit beginning to challenge me. Why was I unwilling to intentionally pastor and develop people with the gift of giving with the same vigor I was other gifts? He really began to change my perspective. And because many of these individuals, as I spent more time with them, I learned that they carry enormous pressure that I really had no understanding of. They have a sense of isolation that is very different than other people. They have kind of a mistrust toward close family or friends because of history having so much money. And they were constantly navigating requests from people who wanted something from them. Often they had experienced very little authentic spiritual community, which as a leader in ministry was my job to give them. It also forced me to confront some of my own assumptions and biases around money and stewardship that I inherited growing up. And honestly, the whole process changed me. It expanded my faith. It deepened my own personal sense of generosity. And it helped me better understand that this gift is often less about the amount someone has and more about how naturally they think about resourcing, opportunity, generosity, and provision. They just think very different than the way I grew up thinking. This gift builds the church by resourcing ministry, meeting practical needs, creating opportunities for others, and helping vision move forward faster than it could without them. Often these people are uniquely gifted at building wealth, stewarding resources, multiplying opportunities, and recognizing where generosity can create real impact. As a leader, part of what you're responsible in leading a person with this gift is releasing them from any sense of guilt or shame they might be carrying, especially in certain Christian environments. And instead helping them understand this gift may actually be why God has entrusted their ability to them, why they are able to earn money quicker and more than other people, why money has actually come naturally to them their whole life. This might be actually one of their biggest contributions to the kingdom. Not something to hide, but something to access for the betterment of others, not to feel guilty about their ability to make money, not to hide their capacity from others, but to steward both with wisdom and generosity for eternal impact. This gift might be missing from your team if you notice constant resource strain, difficulty funding your vision, fear around generosity, or scarcity thinking shaping your leadership decisions. The gift of giving helps ministry move from limitation into possibility. And if you struggle with this as a leader, getting around people with the gift of giving will challenge your own leadership mindset to move from limitation into possibility as well. So here's what these two gifts have in common: the gift of faith and the gift of generosity. Both require you as a leader to look deeper for spiritual fruit. Neither of these gifts are easy to measure, and they don't always show up in a ministry dashboard or on an org chart or in the metrics that you're looking at. But if you step back, you'll often notice who consistently helps teams move forward with faith in what God is actually doing, and who consistently creates generosity, opportunity, and provision around them to meet the vision that God has given leaders. There's likely an anointed person carrying one of these gifts quietly in the background, helping create momentum on your team and in your ministry that others are benefiting from. Your role as a leader is to notice it, name it, and begin developing it intentionally. So here's your action step. This week, I want you to pay attention to which of these two gifts creates the most tension in you as a leader. Which one is hardest for you to understand, hardest to trust, hardest to relate to? Maybe the gift of faith feels irresponsible or impulsive to you. Or maybe people with the gift of giving make you uncomfortable because of your own experiences and mindsets around money and resources. Don't ignore that. Get curious about it. And then intentionally have a conversation with someone who carries that gift well. Ask them, what do you see that I may not see? What helps you trust God in this way? How do you think about resources, generosity, or opportunity? And what advice or encouragement do you have for me as a leader who wants to grow in this area? Because part of developing as a leader is learning how to value gifts you may not naturally carry yourself. And when you do, your team becomes stronger, more effective, and far more fruitful. If this episode has been helpful to you as a leader, and maybe you are even thinking, man, I've been seeing these patterns, I just didn't know how to name them. Well, that is exactly why we created the Spiritual Gifts Leadership Toolkit. Because recognizing these gifts in theory is one thing, but knowing how to identify them, develop them, and lead them well on a real team, well, that's quite another. This leadership toolkit will help you recognize gifts you may be overlooking, understand how each gift contributes to healthy ministry, and develop people more intentionally with far more clarity. And maybe most importantly, it will help you put language around leadership dynamics you may be experiencing but haven't known how to address yet. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you'll find a link in the show notes or visit katycole.com forward slash spiritual gifts.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

I'm so glad we got to spend this time together on the Female Church Leaders Podcast. I hope you're walking away encouraged, equipped, and reminded that your calling truly matters. To keep growing, join us for our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort at ClosingTheLeadershipGap.com. It's a guided coaching experience, including live QA with me, designed to accelerate your leadership journey. If this podcast has been helpful to you, would you please take a moment to follow, rate, and share it? Your engagement helps the algorithms suggest our resources to female church leaders we haven't had a chance to meet yet. And don't forget to follow at female church leaders on Instagram for encouragement and leadership tools designed just for you. You can also follow my personal feed at Katie Cole spelled K-A-D-I-C-O-L-E. Keep leading faithfully, keep growing your leadership gifts, and I'll see you next Monday because Sunday is coming and you are going to be ready for it.