Help me understand tasks

I want to create an "authentication" task that gets run when the app starts.

I want to set a field in this task to an assocarray with functions inside of it.. and be able to hit those functions in a "get content" task.

I can get this assocarry just fine, but after I assign it to the field, the functions are coming up invalid. How do I work around this.  do I have to hit each function and pull the data that I want out of them before I assign it to a field?

Thanks!!