The Power of Our Story

    Over the past year, the Lord has led me down a path from campaign politics to the world of grassroots organizing.  Of the numerous lessons this journey has taught has been that everyone of us has a very powerful tool to effect change for God’s Kingdom in the public arena:  our own story. 

While working as a senior staff member of a congressional campaign, I
saw how one of the most well-intentioned candidates had to shift from
spending her time directly engaging potential voters to spending 95% of
her time raising money.  The unfortunate reality of our political
system is that to be elected to office, you need to spend a lot of time
with a lot of people who can bring your campaign a lot of money. 

    This does not stop once elected to office; only, once in office,
lobbyists, elected officials, and other people of power also vie for
your time.  As a result, elected officials rarely spend time doing what
drove them to run in the first place: help their constituents.

    As a result, they love to hear what they can do for us. 
When we sit at the table with them and tell them how some injustice has
directly affected our lives, we reconnect them with the passions that
drove many to choose this line of work.  When we then tap into that and
ask them for a specific course of action to address this problem and
offer our help in working to make it happen, we could easily be the
most exciting meeting they have all week.

    Every single one of us has a story an elected official is dying to hear.  What is your story? 
What would you like an elected official to do in response to it?  I
invite you to post yours in the comment section to this dairy.  I
invite you to engage other people’s stories and speak a prophetic word
into how God could use that story in the public arena.