The Rev Dr George Byron Koch (coke) has been the Pastor of Resurrection, West Chicago, since June of 1994. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics in 1968 from Elmhurst College, a Master of Divinity from Church Divinity School of the Pacific in 1992, and a Doctor of Ministry from King’s Seminary in 2003.
In 1981, prior to full-time ministry, he founded Koch Systems Corporation, a venture-funded national software company, and was its president and CEO. He has also been a director of a number of corporate and nonprofit boards. In 1989 he authored the bestselling book Oracle: The Complete Reference, the number-one book in its class for 20 years, and translated into eight languages. It has sold an estimated 1,000,000 copies worldwide.
In 1990, he 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 for four years while attending seminary, and applied Christian moral and ethical principles for employees and customers, executing a major turnaround of the once-struggling business. It grew from 45 million dollars in revenue to a quarter-billion, and became a dominant market force worldwide. Some believe this effort positively affected Oracle overall and helped 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 and teacher of a small Midwest church, Resurrection, in West Chicago, Illinois, and also established long-term relationships with missions in Africa and India. George has appeared numerous times on local and national radio and television programs (including Moody Broadcasting, TLN, and The 700 Club). He has led and taught secular and religious conferences, and written numerous magazine and newspaper articles, from Christianity Today to The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the books The Country Parson’s Advice to His Parishioners and the current What We Believe and Why. His doctoral work on Healing Prayer will be released as a book in the year to come.
He and his wife Victoria married in 1979, and they have two sons, George August Koch, a writer and freelance Christian copy editor, and Isaiah James Koch, who is in the grocery business and an avid bowler.
To learn more about Dr. George Koch, visit his personal website at georgekoch.com
