Worship leader and music experimenter David Crowder was a guest on the Bad Christian Podcast, and shared his thoughts about not listening to Christian music, churches being a business, and worship music having a limited vocabulary.

The hosts of BCP and Crowder opened up their conversation talking about playing shows. Crowder said his favorite shows are in small clubs where the crowd is more intimate rather than huge arena tours like he is on now.

He then reflected back on his past when he was just starting out in the early 2000s with his band. Crowder said it was an exciting time because churches were "kind of underwriting musicians to explore popular music."

"There was such distance in church music previously that anything that sounded current was kept at arms length, and then suddenly something let go and now everybody is wanting something new that sounds current and in their space for the community," he shared.

The worship leader said playing for these churches as a young band let them experience great sound systems and monitors whereas if they played in clubs they would be playing for beer through one microphone and bad PA's.

"It felt like the church was doing something particularly different for culture...they wanted to hear and be moved by something that reflected their experience outside of the church," he continued.

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Crowder then referenced his 2008 album, Remedy, which saw them play a lot of clubs to reach out of the church box. They wanted to let Christians know that "God's presence is active. He's not contained by the material. He is present and active in lots of things we wouldn't suspect Him." It helped open the door both ways, with non-Christians getting to experience them and believers being ok with having God outside of the four walls of the church.

The next record, Church Music, they sought to do the inverse, and returned to the churches. He was then shocked because through that couple of years the scene had completely changed.

"Now the churches were more expensive to be in than the clubs were. I'm like 'Woah, what happened man. Where was that value and understanding that you're bringing something of popular art into your community. You got some folks sitting around saying, 'You know, we put all this money in this deal, these guys are selling tickets and we should be getting as much from it as we can. It felt like less of an investment and we turned our churches into venues to generate funds. There's an argument to make for that. For me, it's sad."

However, his sadness is more in the fact that churches were for the most part acting better than the venues in terms of treating musicians. He said the churches were also paying more than the clubs. Something Crowder said he feels "privileged" to have had. The church allowed him to keep doing music because clubs would not have paid the bills and he would have quit.

Two of the BCP hosts, Toby Morrell and Matt Carter, have a similar experience as they are in the band Emery. They were a young band in the Christian music scene as well in the early 2000s.

"We started playing in churches first for that same reason" Carter said. He explained the churches would treat them well. They would get hotel rooms and Chinese food for the band and "we didn't even have fans." He said youth pastors would bring them in hoping their wild music would be a "safe place to drop off their kids, and they can pretend to mosh to it at youth group." This was something they ultimately grew to hate because they felt there was no authenticity and their fan base was fake.

Morrell said, "We didn't deserve the goodness of it" because at the time they were nobodies. He continued, "So many bands that stayed in that circuit, if they didn't get bigger, if they didn't transcend that...they never got out of the youth group" and they began to fade away as the kids got older.

The hot's then asked Crowder what kind of Christian artists he likes to play with on tour or listen to. Surprisingly, the answer was he does not listen to Christian music and has no idea what is on Christian radio.

"I understand and appreciate that it is necessary and useful for a lot of people but it doesn't resonate with me." He said the music he listens to is not "intentionally faith oriented." Crowder said while touring he likes to have like-minded artists that will convey the same message.

They also had a funny conversation about writing worship music. The singer joked writing Christian music is very limiting, "You gotta talk about the oceans, you gotta talk about the beach the sand, the flip flops. You gotta say the same thing over and over and over, but make it feel like you're going to the beach for the first time. Your vocabulary is very limited and it's very hard to create something new out of such a small collection of words."

That part of it bugs him the most, but he eases the feelings when seeing people totally into worship and immersed in God. It makes it all worth it.

Morrell joked that when he was in school he was writing songs for the worship team and he approached someone and said he was writing really deep songs that covered real emotions. He felt that it was tough to convey the message of Jesus in them because he felt lost. The person replied, that's fine, just make sure the last verse points to Jesus.

"But I don't feel that, I'm in the bad part. I trust Jesus, but I don't know the future," he explained. The vocalist thinks expanding the vocabulary of worship to show more honesty will help and encourage more people in the long run.

For more information on the Bad Christian Podcast, record label, and their blog, click here.

Stay tuned for BREATHEcast's interview with David Crowder coming later this week!