The Guardian’s story last month about rising membership in the Labour party is welcome news. On 6 May last year, 201,293 people were members of the party. This number is now around the 388,407 mark. It nearly reaches our last high point of 400,000 odd in 1997, before numbers began to fall away.

As the report recognises, many of the new members joined after the election defeat in May 2015. This was my experience standing as a parliamentary candidate in the safe Tory seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham, when through the campaign, the ‘interested’ became ‘supporters’, and some of those became members. It was the one legacy I was definitely proud of, on an otherwise bleak night for Labour.

There is little doubt, however, that the ‘Corbyn effect’ is at the heart of the most powerful surge.

His successful leadership campaign inspired people who had felt disenfranchised from the political system. Packed town hall meetings, public demonstrations and other classic models of democratic engagement brought Jeremy Corbyn closer to those angry with the status quo. He has reached into parts of electoral disaffection that others could not tap. Whether this extends beyond a strong faithful is yet to be seen.

With long-standing debates about our ‘democratic deficit’, rising party membership is one sign of an engaged body politic, albeit still a small one in comparison to the overall voting population.

The big challenge (and opportunity) for Labour is what to do with the membership. Numbers, after all, are irrelevant if we don’t think about what they mean for us as an organising force.

From my standpoint it seems that there are potentially three directions of travel.

The first: business as usual. In this scenario, the Labour party continues largely in its current vein. All of us who are members can perhaps share stories like this one … With our shiny new red membership card burning proudly in our pocket, we trudge out on a dark, cold night, knock on a stranger’s door and step in to the house of the ‘branch chair’ or ‘secretary’ for our first monthly branch meeting (swap for upstairs room in a pub, community centre hall or similar). As minutes turn to hours, our enthusiasm for politics seeps away, lost in seemingly impenetrable language and a love of procedure. If we are lucky, there will be time for a brief discussion on an obscure (or extremely parochial) political issue, usually dominated by two or three know-it-alls who hold the floor.

I exaggerate for effect, but only slightly.

I have spoken to countless friends who have joined the party in recent months, many of whom report similar experiences and a great deal of frustration as a result. They feel that the local party is at best a talking shop, at worst moribund.

With larger meetings, these talking shops are notable for talking to themselves. They became places that unite people around common themes of anger. Our experiences of local Labour conferences might attest to this. Undoubtedly good events but people in the room are Labour members, broadly in agreement with one another, and not speaking to the world outside.

The second: we focus only on accentuating our differences. I am genuinely, whole-heartedly behind rising membership numbers. The new members I know are good people with good principles, wanting to make a difference. We will agree on 75 per cent and argue over the remaining 25 per cent. Just so.

However, the stuff that has caused me most disappointment and in some cases anger over the past few months has been infighting. It has caused more sensible voices to acquiesce or go silent. Some have walked away.

Many a time I have put finger to keyboard to retort, only to retreat for sake of not having to wade through bile all over my Facebook or Twitter stream. I just do not have the stomach for it right now.

Serious policymaking requires groups on all wings of the party to gather. Many ideas need to be debated from all perspectives, not shunned on account of them not fitting with the supposed party mandate.

The third: we organise for the common good. You might detect my frustrations with the first two options. This is because both are directed inwards, focused either on perpetually endorsing what we already believe or on accentuating our differences.

The third option offers us a real opportunity for building on our new membership, and one that is so incredibly exciting, I cannot believe that we have not already begun to harness it.

Our increased membership comprises people who are angry, want to make a difference and – I hope – believe that a Labour government is the way to achieve change.

We know that, even with our increase in numbers, this does not equate to a change in votes. To obtain a majority of just two in parliament, we need to win back over 90 seats. This is the scale of the challenge and it is not one to be brushed aside.

With numbers comes power, and with power can come change. Now is the time, in my view, to take the successes of community organising seriously. As a party, we have flirted with the idea before but we have never taken the leap to make it central to our local campaigning strategy.

Up and down the land, movements are under way uniting faith groups, charities and unions in addressing some of the most pressing local and national concerns. Take the work of Nottingham Citizens, a broad based community organising alliance of 43 civil society institutions. As a result of extensive listening exercises within its network, it has undertaken small but significant local actions that have delivered real change for people experiencing hardship.

It has taken on national issues too – bringing an incredible 2,300 people into a room to hold national politicians to account on the social care crisis.

Community organising commands us to get out and be within and of our neighbourhoods. It means moving beyond voter-ID based canvassing to local campaign actions that would put Labour at the heart of local neighbourhood politics.

In adopting a serious community organising strategy, Labour will spend more time listening to those outside of our cosy (or prickly) enclaves. Only then can we begin to craft a message that resonates beyond our membership.

And with nearly 400,000 signed-up members, we have got the people power to achieve it.

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Jason Pandya-Wood is a Labour party member in Leicester West and stood as Labour’s candidate in Sleaford and North Hykeham in 2015. He tweets @jjwood01