Billy Chia

I received an email today from my sister-in-law who is teaching English and sharing Jesus in Hong Kong. Over the last months their church has not has a permanent place to call home. Each week the meeting place changed depending on what was available. Those who really wanted to worship the Lord with other Christians had to check the website to find out where they would meet that week.

The praise is that in May they are scheduled to have a permanent building to meet in which will open avenues for ministry that were previously closed due to their transient nature.

The whole story made me think about how dedicated someone has to be to attend a church gathering that shifts locations each week. It also made me wonder what they heck they were doing to worship God that was so intriguing that people were compelled to seek out the new location each week.

Here church is easy. We have a big building with a large sign on a major road. Parking is ample. We make coffee for you. We have people hold the door for you and pass out a folder that explains how everything works to alleviate any feelings of mystery or anxiety. We put all the words on a screen in large, readable font and often the worship leader even shouts the words out to you to encourage singing. We make every effort to keep things attractive, accessible, and amiable. Very little effort is required on your part to participate.

While I believe keeping things friendly and understandable says, “We value our guests,” sometimes I also feel like making church “too easy” says, “We don’t value dedicated Christianity.”

Is church too easy?

I just got back from small group.

We touched briefly on 1st John and spoke at length about writing college papers.

I absolutely loved it

Heck of a game last night.

In all the running around getting trash thrown out and such, it was hard to find a spare moment to focus on Billy’s birthday before he left. In all the house cleaning frenzy, I know there were times that he felt like I loved cleanliness more than I love him.

But now, with the house spotless and Billy gone, there’s not much to do but think about being apart for his birthday.

So, Eve and I put together a little something for you, kiddo, in hopes of making your birthday special.

Can’t wait to talk to you tonight!

(Posted by Sarah)

Most popular posts on billychia.com for October 2007

1. Willow Creek Reveal Frenzy 
2. The Beginings of a Rockstar
3. How to Shower 
4. Find New Popular Worship Songs 
5. Hillsong United Lyrics: True or False? 
6. The Best Evansville Dentist
7. Hacking Your WordPress.com Stats
8. Pre - Worship Confessional | 10.29.07
9. Get Nooma “Name” on Myspace - 48 hours Only
10. Newest Hilarious Chia Pet

He’ll make you work harder until you get burned out. This is one of Satan’s oldest tricks but somehow it still seems to work on me. Although I’ve gotten like 900 times better at saying “no” to things I still tend to over commit myself in the name of “ministry.” I’m pretty stressed and I think after this week I seriously need to evaluate what God wants me to drop.
I went to Mt. Pleasant last night, it rocked.
Highlights:
1. Playing Frisbee
2. Putting up flyers for a cool benefit concert that rich’s band, One Day Less, is playing at.
3. Rocking out at the coffee house
4. Cafe late
5. rich’s obnoxiously large “thunder cats style” expanding in size knife complete with scuba diver case resistance up to 20,000 leagues. (I think it was some kind of fishing knife. I just thought it had a menacing look)
6. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, so good. Skip, do not walk, to your movie store to rent this DVD now. It’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that had an accurate concept of love. (you’ll be skipping because of the joy in the satisfaction of having rented one of the best movies ever movie)

Downers for the trip:
1. My new guitar’s preamp didn’t work I had to play rich’s guitar
2. The wind. wind doesn’t play nice with frisbees.

Fun stuff to come:
1. The kung fu movie is coming along beautifully
2. I get to play guitar for worship at a chapel service at my old high school tomorrow with one of my friends who’s a youth minister and will give a short message.
3. Invite a friend weekend for my church’s youth group is this weekend. Featuring One Day Less as the house worship band. I’m so geeked. Acquire the fire really had an amazing impact on my youth group’s kids and my church. I hope this next weekend can really run with the spirit of excitement that God has laid down.

So yeah if you were feeling list deficient there’s a bunch of lists just for you.

Acquire the Fire was amazing! I don’t know if my heart has ever been this broken in my entire life. This is what happens when you realize that we are eternal people that’s just how God created us and you know that some people don’t want God. I know that the Bible tells me that God doesn’t rape people. He wants people to be with Him for eternity, but he doesn’t force them. If people don’t want to be with God he deosn’t make them, and they end up spending eternity outside of his blessing. Some people call this state “hell” but I think modern society’s connotations of what “hell” is are way distorted. The fact is that Hell sucks and I don’t want to see anyone go there. I would hate to think that someone would choose God (or if your hardcore Lutheran “be prompted by the holy spirit to recieve God’s gift”) if only I would talk to them, but I’m just keeping my trap shut.

I want God to make me more bold. Bold to say, “Hey Jesus is amazing, he changed my life. Yeah I’m still a guy who suffers. Jesus never promised an end to suffering, only that He would be there to comfort us when we do. I’m not perfect. Jesus never promised that we would be perfect people here on eath, only that he would forgive our sins and we will be perfect in heaven. I’m going to spend and eternity in paridise and you can too. Jesus loves you. Really, it’s not just some elaborate scam, He’s real and he actually cares about you.”

I don’t know I’ve never been good as a street coner evengelist. I’ve always had this philosophy that you need to buid relationships with people before your words are credible, especially when you speak on the deepest issues of life, death, and eternity. But now I just feel like I need to say more or do more or be bolder somehow. There’s gotta be a way to spred this message. People are so lonely they need to know about this love. Not that I’m never lonely. I’m lonely all the time, but the fact is that God is with me in my loneliness and his love has changed me.

God doesn’t rape you. If you don’t want him, he loves you so much he’ll let you walk away. But He’s calling the whole time, “Come back to my arms, it’s where you belong.”

Tunes: Relient K, High of 75

Today was a great day. I listened to The Cure and REM and it made me happy. I also found this song by Relient K that I think could very well my theme song

“Because on and off the clouds have fought for control over the sky,
And lately the weather has been so bipolar and consequently so have I,
Now I’m sunny with a high of 75 since you took my heavy heart and made it light
And it’s funny how you find you enjoy your life when your happy to be alive.”

Had a special praise rehearsal tonight. I’m not playing this weekend (taking youth to Acquire the Fire and way excited) but we have a praise and worship night coming up on April 23. It’s going to be a whole night of just worship music. I’m hoping some people make it out to worship that might not normally come out a Sunday morning. The Gospel is super cool and everyone deserves to hear it, even the people who sleep in on the weekend.

I wrote a song today. You can check it out. Here’s the lyrics:

Did I forget what I came here for? Did I make amends?
Did I settle the score or am I stuck in a museum of my past actions absent consequences?

It seems I never cease to degrade my sense of integrity.
I’m calling on a favor that was never owed to me in the first place.

This one room house with a locked door isn’t much I’ll admit.
I should’ve asked for more when the supply is never-ending.
I guess it’s in my nature to break out against the entry.

It seems I never cease to degrade my sense of integrity.
I’m calling on a favor that was never owed to me in the first place.

(musical interlude complete with skip due to poor recording equipment)

It seems I never cease to degrade my sense of integrity.
I’m calling on a favor that was never owed to me.
It seems I never ceased integrity when calling on the gift that I received in the first place.

so that’s it. let me know what you think.

Tunes: New Found Glory, Failure’s not flattering

It’s amusing to me how full your life can be, and yet so empty. I can engage in all kinds of community, and there are many people who know and love me, still I can feel lonely and lost inside. Today was just one of those days. I know tomorrow when I wake up I’ll feel better, but right now I’d give anything for a cup of coffee and someone to share it with.

Today I sent in my resume to a youth center that is looking for a new director. Being proactive about my future is definitely fun, I should do some more of that.

Current Tunes: Mae, Suspension
So I believe Big Fish is my new favorite movie. I saw it yesterday for the first time and was completely moved by it. Life is truly made up of stories and perception is reality. I’ve decided I’m a big fan of fiction. Real life is real enough for me most of the time, if I’m going to engage in media I want to revel in the escapism of it. Another great flick: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; I must’ve seen that 30 times when I was a kid.
Today was a very cleansing day. I tend to be a pretty anal retentive kind of person. “But Billy,” you ask, “you’re so right-brained and creative, aren’t you artsy kids supposed to be messy?” well, yes and no. I’m so scatter-brained that I need to have everything in just the right place or else I lose it. Yes, I’m that guy, the one who always has a clean desk and ticks you off because he can pull a pencil out at will while you search endlessly in a heap of papers. With that said, after my wife divorced me all semblance of order disappeared. Enter - why real life is real enough for me.
It’s been a long road to normal. For the first month it was basic stuff like sleep that I had to focus on while other things fell by the wayside. (Yes, it does suck to go a month without sleep) So, slowly step-by-step I’ve regained different parts of my life. I’ve been proactive about it. I want a normal life again, and I’m not down with reveling in the past. So today I cleaned my room. (I was gonna do it yesterday but when Big Fish came on HBO I was glued). One step closer.

In iTunes: Led Zepplin, Over the Hills and Far Away

Oh yes, how fun is it to buy new stuff? Quite fun. Today I got up ghetto eary for this insane sale. I had fearful inclinations that I would show up in the morning only to be 47th in line and someone else would buy my gear. So I showed up early and I was not 47th; I was 1st! I was not only 1st, but I was 1st for a whole hour. Yeah that sucked, but I was able to buy some kewl stuff for my church and I got free guitar strings. I decided not to go with the Alvarez. I was just uneasy about it, another other guitar’s been calling me. It was a total toss up between the two. I completely bathed the situation in a prayer and I believe I was lead to make a Godly purchase. I am now the proud owner of a super cool Ibanez.

I’m pretty excited about not leading worship tomorrow. Normally I lead every chance I get, I love it. Sometimes you can get so caught up in playing all the right notes that you lose God in the sheet music. Then you know it’s time to take a break. I’m looking forward to being able to lift up my hands tomorrow when I want to and not having to think about them being on the fret board.

Rode my bike today. It is a dilapidated pile of tendonitis waiting to happen, but once I worked the kinks out of the chain w/ some WD40 I was rockin’ the pavement. Did I mention that it’s been stripped of the gearshift so I was able to experience the beautiful sensation of furious peddling coupled with a blazing speed of 7 mph? Seriously though, it was major fun.

In iTunes: Further Seems Forver, The Sound
Mood: pretty geeked

Today was defiantly red-letter. I was so crazy busy I don’t even think I got a shower in. I feel like a discarded popsicle on a sidewalk in summer, but even that couldn’t ruin my mood. My Dad and I got to chainsaw some stuff today. (Insert audible grunt) See, my father wasn’t around a lot when I was a kid. In fact most of the time he wasn’t around at all, and lived in a different state from the rest of the family. Hotel management is a high turnover career that takes you to far and away places while your family attempts to maintain community roots in a stationary hub.
This morning he busted out this off-brand, plastic chainsaw he purchased for around $100. He was so pround of it, it was awesome. He showed me how to keep it the chain tight and oiled, and how to mix the gasoline. Then we chopped down a whole bunch of willow trees next to my parents’ flower shop. The ground was saturated from the recent snowmelt; our shoes muddied as we stacked branch upon branch on top of the quaggy soil. It was just dirty, sweaty, manly-man work (with a 100 dollar chain saw) and we did it together.
This afternoon I met up with my praise team director at the music store. They are having an insane sale where you buy one guitar and get like an amp, or another guitar, or drums free! So we sifted through some basses and amps. Tomorrow I’m going to try to beat the crowd but some gear for the church. There is also a beautiful black Alvarez electric/acoustic that, if it’s in God will, shall be mine.
At nite I went over Josh’s. We played Worms and Dance Dance Revolution. Then we talked about making our Kung fu movie. I was totally blown away by how creative these kids were. Their ideas just kept flowing from this ceaseless pot of random goodness. Here’s one little snippet,
“Hey it’s gotta be super cheesy”
“Of course”
“Let’s use ketchup as blood”
“Ok, but let’s use fast-food ketchup packets as blood.”
“yeah when someone gets their arm chopped off a bunch of ketchup packets will fly out.”
I’m so geeked.

In iTunes: Hey Mercedes, Knowing When to Stop
Tonight I was looking forward to hanging out with a new friend, but alas I was stood up in favor of homework. I can’t say I’m completely disappointed, I mean this gave me time to attempt to reformat my blog. And what a joy it was being beat into submission by an onslaught of blogger.com structural integrity bugs. I swear if I see one more error message, I’m redlining.
So my brother left me a bike to ride around. I’m so excited I want to go home and ride around it right now. I remember being a kid, when going to “ride bikes” was just something you did.
“what are you guys going to do”-mom
“we’re gonna go ride bikes”-me
All of a sudden one day you become an adult and riding a bike has to be some sort of exercise or sport. No way man, I’m going round the neighborhood tonite just cuz!
I’ve spent way too much time on my computer lately. I seriously need to go live a non-cyber life. If I can get in touch with my good friend Flynn tomorrow then I will go down to his church in Whitmore Lake on Sunday.

Last nite I played my first show in a long time. It was a Molotov cocktail of adrenaline, peace, nervous sweat, and joy. I write these songs continually that never get played. Sometimes art is never finished until it is shared and experienced. In that way I feel very completed.

Alaine, Jolyn, and Beth drove the hour and a half with me to the open mike night. I felt very thankful for their support. I played scrabble with Alaine and Beth today. We talked about making a kung fu film. I hope they are down with it because I’m straight up serious. We’ll see if the ideas come out.

At the show Rich brought along a very attractive friend. I put so much into my performance that afterward I was almost buckled over from a fatigued diaphragm. I griped about it to the table as a means of explaining my posture. So, Rich’s friend says to me, “You should work out, it will strengthen your diaphragm.” I’m sure she just meant it as a friendly comment but I’m thinking, “Gees, is it that evident that I’m outta shape?”

On that note I really want to start running again. I have a completely valid reason for why I don’t. On last summer’s mission trip one of the youth taught me how to use raver strings with glowstix. I took the shoelaces out of my running shoes to do it. So you see, I just need some shoelaces and then I’ll run. um, yeah so by completely valid reason, I meant lamer excuse. I did go for a walk today. It was excellent. More tomorrow.