I’m not sick. Not that kind of virus. But, if you can imagine a virus…think back to a time that you were in school and someone came in sick. The next day it was a few of you and then suddenly everyone in town had the flu or cold or whatever it was that was going around.

I know that’s a pretty negative image…shots, pills, days spent in bed missing out on whatever it was you were supposed to be doing. So let’s take that notion and revamp it a little bit.

Strip away the negative connotations of a virus; let’s just take the way that it spreads. One person has it, they give it to another who gives it to another who gives it to another…I think you get the picture.

Now…replace the virus itself with the story of a group of Sudanese refugees living on the fringes of Cairo (a story that we’ll dive into soon). So you have the story. Now, you go tell someone. But don’t just tell them. That’s not quite enough. You have to make it contagious. You have to spread it. You have to give it to them in a way that doesn’t allow them to stop it…rather, a way that drives it home and leaves them with no choice but to spread it further.

Now it’s rolling. You’ve told them, they told someone who told someone…and you have participated in the viral spreading of an idea; an idea that was on your mind and now is on the minds of 10 or 100 or 1000 others. And it only took two things. A compelling story and your willingness to participate in it.

The big kicker is that it’s almost impossibly easy. Just stop for a second and realize that people listen to you. It’s not a question, not a competition…it’s a fact. People listen to you. Maybe it’s one person, your mom. Perhaps it’s the 18 students in your class. I could be the 300 people in your congregation. Maybe it’s the 10,000 people who read your magazine. Whether it’s 1 or 10,000 the point is that people listen to you and care about what you’re saying.

Now add that to the endless ways that you can communicate with those people. Facebook, twitter, e-mail, blog…let’s go old-school, a phone call…a letter, a conversation over coffee. And these are just a small handful of the possibilities available to you to create and spread stories. People want to hear what you have to say and you have all of the tools that you need to say it.

So say something worth saying. No one can rewrite stories that they haven’t heard.