Is there a story here? A story that resonates? This is a question you and I should ask ourselves as leaders. I learned to be alert to a story from a PR executive I encountered in a ministry I volunteer with. He is always on the hunt for a good story he can share with the world. Sometimes, he will stare deeply into space and exclaim, “I think we have a story here.”
Mining stories from our own life, stories from work, stories worth retelling takes skill. First, we must recognize whether there is a story. Then we must find out more about the story in such a way that ultimately we can effectively retell it.
Jesus taught through stories called parables. In literary terms today, we call these allegories, stories that have a conceptual or philosophical meaning behind them.
Recently, I heard a new twist on a common phrase: A picture is worth a thousand words, and a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures. Maybe I can add that a story is worth a thousand metaphors.
The day I was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1976, my mom could not leave the house for the hospital because of raging gun fire and bombs. The Lebanese civil war had been raging for one year already. I briefly shared this one time with an audience, and the leaders invited me back. They said, “Please tell us more about your upbringing.” I wondered why they wanted to know all that? It’s just crummy stories of the depravity of war. The answer of course is that they wanted the story. Stories capture our imagination and pull us in deeply toward understanding. When I shared this with my mentor he said, they want to hear how these real life stories shaped who you are.
Concerning your organization, what stories can you learn more about and share with the world?
