In praise of longevity

What makes WORLD extraordinary? It’s the people who have poured their lives into this mission—people who believe in staying, building, and leading for the long haul. WORLD people stick around, and that longevity brings tremendous benefits that go well beyond professional experience. More about that in a moment.

Joel Belz’s long-term commitment was about longevity—and vision. From starting WORLD in 1981 to mentoring generations of journalists, Joel shaped the foundation we stand on today. He was our founder and remained active, even after his day-to-day leadership of the organization ended. Up next in that leadership line is Nick Eicher, whom Joel hired in 1990. Nick still leads the entire editorial output of the organization some 35 years later.

Even those who’ve moved on left their mark, making WORLD stronger. I assume that all organizations value longevity, and we know how blessed we are to have so many who have given huge chunks of their careers to this work.

Longevity with key people becomes even more important—and more difficult—when an organization is experiencing rapid growth and change, as WORLD has the past several years. That’s why we were so thankful when Lynn Vincent returned to edit WORLD a few years back. How often do you get a chance to add a seasoned editor from outside the organization who also has years of experience inside it?

Well, at least one more time, as it turns out.

I am very happy to tell you that Les Sillars has agreed to become WORLD’s editor-in-chief. With more than 20 years of service in different capacities with WORLD and a legacy of mentoring top-notch journalists at Patrick Henry College, Les embodies the excellence and faithfulness we strive for. Longevity! He has been with Patrick Henry nearly as long as he has WORLD, and the high-performing journalists who graduate from PHC tell the story of Les’ work there.

Editor-in-Chief Les Sillars in his Patrick Henry College office Photo by Zoe McBride

A few years ago, Les began producing WORLD’s podcast extra, Doubletake, with his journalism students at PHC. He is eager to become much more involved in the day-to-day of our entire editorial team, and the team is looking forward to his leadership.

In addition to taking on the editor-in-chief role, Les also will be taking over for Lynn Vincent as executive editor of WORLD Magazine. You’ll still see Lynn in every magazine issue in her Voices column, but Lynn is going to be focusing most of her energy on WORLD’s expanded training and professional development program, which I’ll tell you more about another time.

Along with news of Les Sillars’ arrival and Lynn’s move, I must let you know of the departure of another editor who has served you here at WORLD for nearly two decades.

Mickey McLean has been a staff editor at WORLD for 17 years, but even before he joined our staff he was one of the primary contributors to worldmagblog.com, one of our early opinion and commentary ventures. Mickey won our Best Blogger contest in 2005, and when we wanted to start a serious online initiative, naturally we turned to him.

Since then, he has devoted most of his energy to the various iterations of our website and other digital products. He led the biweekly production of WORLD’s iPad app before smartphones made that app all but obsolete. As WORLD has become more digital and less papery, we’ve all relied on Mickey’s faithful guidance, as we did at the beginning.

Mickey inaugurated another important role at WORLD, that of audience engagement editor. In that role, Mickey responded with wisdom, kindness, and intelligence to every letter and email we received from our audience. You may have been one of those. If you were, you know the care with which Mickey responded, and directed others to respond.

Mickey is retiring from WORLD to care for his wife, Tammie, who was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s a few years ago. Those of us who have worked with Mickey all these years will miss him, but I hope you will see him from time to time even after he steps down at the end of January.