The Duty's in the Details

Today was a day for correspondence. A letter to a reader who had sent me a photocopy of an old article in Christian Standard by W.F. Lown that told the story of the merger of Midwest Christian College and Ozark Bible College decades ago. (This in response to my column encouraging more such mergers today.) An e-mail to a reader /friend who wanted to talk with me and Paul Williams about a piece Paul had written decrying the preponderance of one DiSC profile among successful church planters.
And then e-mails recruiting people to help with projects I'm involved with.
One task is to find a few folks in Indianapolis who would participate in a committee to help make local arrangements for a meeting of the Stone-Campbell Dialogue in that city this October. The committee will be made up of church staff people from independent Christian churches, a cappella churches of Christ, and Disciples of Christ congregations. My job is to recruit the 4C's members. (Two have already said yes. One or two more, and I'll be there!) Next I needed to write e-mails to folks asking them to lead table discussions at the Networking Breakfasts co-sponsored by Milligan College and Standard Publishing at next summer's North American Christian Convention.
All this sounds simple when I describe it in just a couple of sentences. But finding the correct e-mail addresses, carefully writing the e-mail invitations and then copying and personalizing them for each new recipient--all this takes time. And it's a little mundane; I get bored and distracted easily, remembering other e-mails I'll need to write, checking a website for information I remember I want, and being distracted by something totally non-work-related that I find on one of those websites.
For an editor, I have a remarkably low interest in pursuing details. I've learned to tend to details in many ways, but I never relish it; and we've made some significant mistakes because I only glanced at something that should have been carefully examined.

I really didn't find anything to photograph today, but my day reminds me of a picture I snapped last week. This is the checklist that managing editor Jim Nieman pulls out just before we give each month's issue to the printer. I've seen it on the table with the proof more than once, but I'd never really read it before. As I thought about the painstaking care he gives each issue before we release it, I'm glad I work with someone with an instinct for details that exceeds my own.