Wilben Short

My call to business.

I am Head of Transport at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. I have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the provision of transport for over 50,000 competitors, Games officials, the media and sponsors during the Games. I have been involved in the planning of the Games since 2004 and was a member of the team that won the bid for London in July 2005.

Before joining London 2012, I worked as a consultant in the rail industry. I also held a number of senior management roles in London Underground including six years as General Manager of the Northern Line. When I was appointed to the Northern Line in 1993, one newspaper wrote - "Mr. Short has taken on one on the most difficult jobs in the capital. He will need all the help from above if he is to turn round the fortunes of the line." Within a year, the government of the day approved the first major Private Finance Initiative within the rail sector in the UK, as a result of which over half-a-billion pounds were invested during the following six years! This reversed a period lasting several decades of underinvestment in the line.

I have been a committed Christian since 1976 and have always seen my calling as being a witness in the business world. From the moment I became a Christian, I started receiving invitations from Christian organisations to go into "full-time ministry". Yet even during my early days as a Christian, I knew God wanted me in business. These invitations were particularly tempting as I was working for a tobacco manufacturing company at that time. At the right time, God made it clear it was time to leave the tobacco industry. I left Sierra Leone, where I grew up, came to the UK with my family, and enrolled on the MBA programme at Cranfield Business School. I was recruited to London Underground from Cranfield in 1989.

Throughout my Christian life, I have served in a number of leadership positions in church and para-church organisations. However my passion has always been to see the kingdom of God at work outside the church. "Jesus did not insist that people were converted before they were healed! He touched them and then said "go and sin no more". I long to see more examples of God touching the lives of those who are not Christians through the witness and service of Christians in the workplace.

Recently this has resulted in a desire to promote Jesus' principles and style of leadership (Servant Leadership) within organisations. Jesus was, is and will always be the most successful and effective leader there has been. He must have been doing something right. Organisations of all types and descriptions will be transformed when leaders see themselves as servants of their followers, lead them with integrity and consideration, rather than the self-centred manipulative form of leadership that most people toil under today.

I identify very strongly with the vision of "Called to Business". There is no true answer to the problems of this world other than Jesus and his representatives in the world of today.

One theological view of the Four Winds of Revelation 7:1 is that the four winds represent the power great powers that have ruled the earth

• The first wind represents the military powers that ruled until the time of Emperor Constantine
• The second wind represents the religious powers such as Catholicism and the Muslim Ottoman Empire.
• The third wind represents the political powers, starting around the time of the Magna Carta and lasting till the mid-20th century.
• The fourth and final power is economic power.

It is therefore more important than ever for Christians who operate within the "economic power system" to understand the potential of business to transform lives in these last days.

December 2007