The
Rev Dr George Byron Koch (pronounced coke),
Pastor and
Rector
Pastor George has been the Pastor and Rector of
Church of the Resurrection (now
Resurrection Anglican Church) since July
of 1994. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics in 1968 from Elmhurst
College, a Master of Divinity degree from Church Divinity School of the Pacific
in 1992, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from King's Seminary in 2003. While an
undergraduate in college he was active in the Civil Rights Movement (the NAACP
and SNCC), wrote a
newspaper column, hosted a series of radio programs, headed the Student Union
for Social Action, managed a coffee house, wrote music, played guitar and
trumpet, and led a band called "The Establishment."
After college, he went to work at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago, a
rock-and-roll club and concert venue, and then for Tomorrow, Inc., a company
that designed and built equipment for touring bands. During the early 1970s, he worked in the
recording and film industry in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as an independent
designer of recording studios, studio engineer and record producer, working with
musicians as varied as Holly Near, Canned Heat, Joel Scott Hill, Lee Michaels, Eric Burdon, War, Jimmy
Witherspoon, Booker T. Jones and others. He also did some writing for
television, including a pilot series for Sesame Street with co-writer Gil
Baldwin.
In the late 1970s this business evolved into Koch Systems Corporation, a
computer systems programming and development company, which produced the world's
first major commercial business application using a relational database (Oracle)
and English language query. George was President and CEO of this company. This
also led to his authoring of the bestselling book
Oracle, The
Complete Reference, the number-one book in its class for the last 18
years, currently translated into 8 languages, and available in bookstores
worldwide (now updated by Kevin Loney). It has sold an estimated 500,000 copies.
In 1990, George accepted the position of Senior Vice President and member of
the Management Committee of Oracle Corporation,
the second-largest software company in the world. He ran the worldwide
Applications Division of Oracle for four years (while attending seminary),
and applied Christian moral and ethical principles for teambuilding and mutual
respect with employees and customers, thus executing a major turnaround of a business with low morale, a small market
share, and significant losses. It grew from 45 million dollars in revenue to a
quarter-billion, and became a dominant market force worldwide — in either 1st or
2nd place (with SAP), depending upon the measures used. Some believe this effort
positively affected Oracle overall and help redirect it:
"Back in the early 1990s, when Oracle was up against the ropes with users and
everyone else, Ellison brought in George Koch to bring a little user focus to
the company. It was an enormously important moment, and in my opinion Koch's
arrival was an essential part of the turnaround that propelled Oracle forward
through the 1990s." - Editorial in Managing Automation Magazine, May, 2002.
In 1994, he left Oracle to become the Pastor of a Midwest church with just 12
members — Church of the Resurrection
— a not-very-traditional Anglican (Episcopal) Church in
West Chicago, Illinois. This church has now grown into a center of healing and
ministry, with vibrant worship, an exciting children's ministry,
youth group, missions teams, adult small groups and education. It is a
congregation which truly strives to help each person to grow and develop their own gifts for ministry
and for life. The
congregation is dedicated to authenticity and loving support
— not a place for "Sunday faces," but a place of honesty and caring.
It is thriving! (It left the Episcopal Church in 2007 and moved to new
facilities. Click here to read more.)
George has preached more than 600 sermons (all available on tape, some available
online here), taught many classes, appeared numerous on radio
and television programs, helped lead a number of conferences on healing prayer, authored
numerous magazine and newspaper articles in publications as diverse as
Christianity Today and The Wall Street Journal, and also
the book
The Country Parson's Advice to His Parishioners, published by
Monarch in England, and a doctoral dissertation titled
"Teaching Healing Prayer for the Victims of Sin."
George is a member of the
Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion, and is one of the founders
of the American Anglican Council
and serves in the Ministry Development Program for the
Anglican Communion Network.
His interest in physics continues, and he is also a potter, a member of the
Potters Council of the American Ceramic Society. He spends his days off
working in porcelain and firing to cone 10 (2350° Fahrenheit). His pottery can
be seen at his ByronArts Web site.
He married the love of his life,
Victoria, in 1979, and they have two sons,
George August Koch, 26, a writer
and freelance copy editor, and Isaiah James
Koch, 23, who loves bowling, The Simpsons, and working at Ultra Foods.
Pastor George also has a personal Web site you may enjoy, at
www.GeorgeKoch.com. He can be reached by e-mail
at pastor@resurrection.org.
Love
God, neighbor and enemy. Ama a Dios, vecino y enemigo.
SUNDAY SERVICE
10 AM in English,
1 PM en Espańol.
