George Byron
Koch
(prounounced "coke")
Biography, sermons, writings, pottery, sundry other diversions. . .
Welcome. This site contains biographical information, books and articles I've written here and there, a huge sermon/theology resource section (click SERMON RESOURCE on the left), database files for Oracle - The Complete Reference, links to my church site, and sundry other things that interest me. To see a more complete biography, click here.
I am husband to Victoria, wife and my best friend for more than three decades, father to George and Isaiah, an ordained Anglican pastor at Resurrection, author, ex-Oracle Senior Vice President, and a guy generally fascinated by most everything, from God to pottery (my Web site called ByronArts) to paleopathology to bosons, the only exception being boiled vegetables.
My undergraduate degree is in physics (1964); my graduate degrees are in Christian ministry — both a Master of Divinity in 1992, and a Doctor of Ministry in 2003. My doctoral dissertation is on Teaching Healing Prayer for Victims of Sin. There is also a PowerPoint version of it here. Among other things, it points out that most of the Christian church is focused on sinners and their redemption from sin. This is a good thing, but it is only HALF of the Gospel. It misses the fact that sin always has victims, and the wounding they've received often cripples them in life, or leads them into their own sin. The GOOD NEWS of Jesus is that just as much as God is willing to forgive sin and sinners, so is He willing to heal sin's victims. That's the WHOLE Gospel. Read more about it in the dissertation.
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Recent speculative blue-sky piece: Saturday Morning Church
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For those of you who find my combination of interests peculiar at best, and for whom Christian or religious stuff is a yawn or even an active dislike, I encourage you to surf around Resurrection's site a bit. I was once interested in Eastern religions and philosophies, and then disappointed and no longer enthralled — and then basically a scientific materialist — believing chance and time made us and the universe, not some imaginary "God." Always curious, though.
Then I discovered, not desiring it at all, that there really is a God, that it's not me, and that He is knowable and desires to be known. In fact, He spends a lot of effort making Himself known — even more than we devote to looking the other way or arguing about how His existence is unnecessary or illogical.
But — and this is a big "but" — He ain't much at all like He is portrayed in the movies, or on TV, or even in many churches or theological discourses. Poke around awhile at Resurrection's site. You'll find it very different, and surprising.
There really is a God, and working for Him as a pastor is more fun than anything else I've ever done. A woman who worked for me when I ran the Worldwide Applications Division at Oracle said, "There were probably a lot of people who wondered why George would give up being senior vice president at a very successful company to become a minister. In my opinion, it was a promotion."
I think so too. It also has better retirement benefits.
Another worthwhile read is "Fear of the Other." It is about game theory, strategy in negotiations, the fear we have of opponents, and the economics of symbiosis. This began as a paper for a Doctor of Ministry class, but people from a variety of fields, including mathematics, economics and religion, have taken an interest in it. For my part, the conclusions I came to, and the dots that were connected opened up a whole new field of interest and effort. I invite you to look it over and draw your own conclusions. The mathematical version of this - Symbiotic Investment - (still under development) is here.
Related to Christian Ministry
Links to some of my religious articles and sermons - and other interesting things:
Writings Here and There
Some of the magazine and newspaper articles I've written (non-religious as well as "religious" - with more to come as I get things scanned in).
To read or buy a copy of The Country Parson's Advice to His Parishioners, click on the title or the link at the left.
Related to Computers and Technology
Oracle - The Complete Reference: Tables and Errata from the
book