George Byron Koch

Author, CEO, ORACLE Senior Vice President, feisty priest and pastor. A science, art and nature lover, a folk musician, a potter… and a passionate advocate for mutual care.

Still fascinated by most everything, especially people. ALL kinds, from everywhere.

The Rev Dr.  George Byron Koch (coke) is the author of the recently published Bullies, Parasites and Slaves, a plain-spoken summary of the history and present reality of the exploitation of many for the benefit of a few, of the methods and thefts of powerful leaders, and how they can be dethroned. NOT a religious book, but a hard reset on the moral foundations of our country, and the world. You will find it eye-opening, rigorous in its review of history, and yet filled with practical next steps, and sanely hope-filled for our future. As one reviewer said, “This book is not intended to be merely a thought exercise or a theoretical exercise, but a real, collaborative way to end centuries of abuse for people of all locations and walks of life who are being taken advantage of by those who ordain themselves to have the power to do so…”         Read the reviews here.        Get the book here: BPS.online.

And his personal vision about mutual care, here: MutualCare.online.

A former Senior Vice President at Oracle, and CEO of two national companies, he was also the Priest and Pastor of Resurrection Anglican Church, West Chicago, from June of 1994 until his retirement in June, 2025. The church changed its name to New Jerusalem in June 2015. His congregation has been a model of multi-ethnic mutual care, celebration and community support, while remaining steadfastly non-political, championing caring relationships over ideology.

Dr. Koch received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from Elmhurst College, with minors in mathematics and scientific German. While in college he was active in the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, was the president of the Student Union for Social Action, wrote a newspaper column, hosted a weekly local radio program, and wrote the original music for, and led, a folk music band called “The Establishment.” Although the band never recorded an album, Marshall Chess (Chess Records) said in a newspaper interview that their lyrics were among the best he had ever heard.

George earned a Master of Divinity from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and a Doctor of Ministry from King’s College and Seminary (now King’s University).

Rock-‘n’-Roll Days

He started his first company, Omicron Electronics, at age 12 (with his brother Bob, age 10), to make printed circuit boards for electronics hobbyists. In high school and college he worked in retail, did spot-welding on an automotive assembly line, painted street addresses on curbs, cleaned real estate offices, delivered the mail, and worked the graveyard shift in a local hospital. After college, in 1969, at 22, he became Assistant Chief Engineer at Aaron Russo’s Electric Theater, a renown immersive Rock Music venue in Chicago. He and several other technical specialists later left to create an independent audio engineering company, Tomorrow, Inc.  George was the company Vice President, and opened the company’s West Coast office in Los Angeles, and led the building of massive public address systems for touring bands and auditoriums.

 

He later left Tomorrow, Inc., and worked independently as a recording engineer in the music and film industries, with musicians including Eric Burdon, War, Lee Michaels, Spencer Davis, Booker T. Jones, Holly Near, and others. He then was hired to be the Editor of (and a writer for) Recording Engineer/Producer Magazine, the music industry standard. He also did some writing for television, including a pilot series for Sesame Street (through Hanna-Barbera) with co-writer Gil Baldwin, some fiction, parts of a couple of books, and an advice column for a Los Angeles newspaper, The LA Free Press.

The Continuing Corporate Adventures

In the mid-1970s George invented and patented a children’s learning toy called “Alphablocks.” He founded and was the CEO of a national company, Guidance Industries, to manufacture and market it. The toy was well-received, had the Parents’ Magazine Seal of Approval, and sold through major catalogs (Sears, Montgomery Wards, etc.) and toy stores throughout the country. Additional learning toys were in development and nearing release, when…

A regional accounting firm embezzeled all of the company’s funds, and those of several other major clients, and then immediately lost them to a South African diamond mine scam!  They were never recovered and no one was prosecuted.

Programming, Banking, Koch Systems, Venture Capital and Oracle…

George moved forward from this bizarre loss by working as an independent contract engineer and programmer (at the invitation of close friend, Irving Greisman), and together they focused on the rapid development of banking systems for major clients in San Francisco. The success of this partnership led, in 1981, to the founding of Koch Systems Corporation, one of the first venture-funded national software companies. George was its President and CEO. An interview from that era is here.

There he designed and led the development and marketing of THESIS, the first major commercial application built on a relational database, Oracle, and used for the management of investment portfolios by major banks and corporations. It featured English-language query for end users (based on George’s language design protocols), one of the first major computer applications ever to do so.

Oracle was selected after George and his team did an exhaustive study of 108 database management systems, in order to choose the one best suited for the development of an advanced portfolio management system, initially for the Federal Home Loan Bank. The study was so grueling that it made stories in computer magazines around the world, and salespeople for some of the losing vendors actually quit their jobs after their own product was examined in detail. You can read Larry Ellison’s comments about George and that early study, here.

When selected, Oracle had fewer than 30 employees, but the conclusion was that it had both the best design and leadership of all of those considered. Koch Systems became Oracle’s first VAR (Value Added Reseller), and was instrumental in Oracle’s early installations in major corporations, including IBM, then one of Oracle’s key database competitors — because they wanted THESIS installed, and only Oracle could support its advanced features.

As the world’s first and most experienced expert on building applications in Oracle, in 1989 he authored the renown bestselling book Oracle: The Complete Reference. It immediately became the number-one book in its class, and remained there for more than 25 years–last published in 2014. It has been translated into eight languages.

It has sold 1,000,000+ copies worldwide in 22 editions, one of the largest selling technology books of all time. From its pages, literally millions of programmers have learned application design and development, SQL (Structured Query Language), “best practices” in design, architecture and programming, and advanced relational database methods. A review in the Library Journal said that it, “should be required reading for all database architects.”  You can read more about it here.

Koch Systems was acquired in 1989, and George became Director of Advanced Technologies for Software Alliance, a division of Teknekron, while then also attending seminary in Berkeley, California.

In 1990, George was recruited to Oracle, first by Marc Benioff (now Salesforce CEO), and then by Larry Ellison, and ultimately accepted the position of Senior Vice President and member of the Management Committee. By then Oracle was the second-largest software company in the world. George ran the worldwide Applications Division for four years while still attending seminary, and visibly applied “golden rule” moral and ethical principles: in product quality, customer care and service, and in workplace culture (care for employees). This produced a major turnaround of the once-struggling business. Even Steve Jobs (at NeXT and Apple) became a client.  George and the team grew it from 45 million dollars in revenue to a quarter-billion, moving it from number 11 to number one in the world market (and even becoming a sponsor of the 1992 America’s Cup race). Some believe this intensive Applications Division 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. 

Different Calling

Fulfilling a childhood calling, in 1994 George finally resigned from Oracle and left the leadership of high tech, in order to become the pastor and teacher of a small Midwest church, Resurrection, in West Chicago, Illinois, and established long-term relationships with aid-focused ministries in Africa, India, Asia and the Middle East. Their constant theme has been mutual care: living out the love that Jesus demonstrated relentlessly, and taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-8), and the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). He believes these teaching have value far beyond the borders of Christianity, and apply equally to everyone, everywhere. We must take care of each other. He continues to advocate for this relentlessly.

George has given more than 2000 classes, teachings, lectures and sermons worldwide (most available online), and has appeared numerous times on national and local radio and television programs, including PBS, CSN, Moody Broadcasting, TBN, and others (many also available online).

He has led and taught at a wide variety of leadership, technology and religious conferences, and written numerous magazine and newspaper articles, from Christianity Today to Conference Board Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. 

He is also the author of the books The Country Parson’s Advice to His Parishioners, as well as Healing Prayer (based on his doctoral studies on how to care for victims of sin, violence and abuse), and the popular and widely-praised What We Believe and Why, which examines the origin and development of Christian beliefs, doctrines and practices (the problems and positive elements of each) and the need for active, persistent respect and cooperation across ALL denominational boundaries (in other words, “STOP FIGHTING and care for the needs of the world, and each other.“)

He believes, simply, that mutual care must stand above ALL national, religious and cultural laws, traditions and creeds.

What We Believe and Why is in use in more than 70 countries, and the audio version of this book (on Audible and iTunes) is now heard on more than 700 radio stations in North America, the United Kingdom, and Africa. Its episodes have been listened to more than two billion times, and it has produced substantive changes in leadership and vision in both major denominations and small congregations.

He has also produced an online course in Hebrew and the Tanach (the “Old Testament”), called Starting with Genesis. It is available free.

George has been a director of many corporate and nonprofit boards, including Apropos Technology (which he helped take public), a ministry to AIDS orphans in Africa (orphanage and school), a ministry to residents of convalescent homes, and The Initiative – a network of leaders, ministries, churches and missions that strive to live out the loving friendship which Jesus called for in John 17.

He has studied several languages, including Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, French, Spanish and German (and is just now dabbling in Arabic), but says he is fluent in only one: English. His interest in physics continues (he suspects the Higgs boson is a composite of particles larger than itself), as well as number theory (he’s the author of one of three known Prime Number formulae), and he is a dedicated ceramic artist in high-fire porcelain, with his own studio, and a membership in the American Ceramic Society and the International Ceramic Artists Network (ICAN).

He is still trying to figure out what he wants to be if he ever grows up.

George and his wife Victoria married in 1979, and they have two sons, George August Koch, a writer and freelance copy editor (www.copyedit.pro), and Isaiah James Koch, who is in the grocery business, an avid bowler, and enjoys classical music, KPOP, anime and Studio Ghibli.