Fans expecting a typical worship music interview from Cory Asbury got anything but.
Appearing on the Youth Group Chronicles podcast while on tour with Forrest Frank, the "Reckless Love" singer delivered nearly an hour of hilarious, brutally honest, and unexpectedly vulnerable conversation-opening up about everything from his troubled teenage years to one of Christian music's biggest theological debates.
One of the interview's most jaw-dropping moments came when Asbury reflected on what he was really like as a teenager.
"I was a bad kid," he admitted without hesitation.
The worship leader revealed that he attended youth group for all the wrong reasons, joking that he mostly went to "get girls and do bad stuff with our friends." He went on to admit that drugs and alcohol dominated much of his teenage life.
"Most times if I was going to youth group, truly, I was high as a kite going to youth group," Asbury confessed.
Yet even during that season, he says God was already calling him into worship ministry.
"Somehow I started leading worship in the middle of all that... there was some sort of God calling me in the middle of all that."
The conversation quickly shifted from serious to hilarious.
Asbury laughed about one of the internet's strangest quirks: for years, searching Google for Brandon Lake's age has sometimes displayed his picture instead.
"I don't know why," he laughed as the hosts joked that fans constantly mistake him for other worship leaders-including Brandon Lake and even Cody Carnes.
Of course, the hosts couldn't resist bringing up "Reckless Love," the song that sparked years of passionate debate across churches.
Asbury admitted he initially had no idea how heated the online arguments had become until much later.
"I didn't realize there was such an internet... happening in the background," he said.
He also shared one unforgettable encounter after performing the song.
An elderly woman approached him and politely informed him that she refuses to sing the lyric "reckless love."
Instead?
"I sing purposeful love," she told him.
Asbury couldn't help laughing.
"Number one, that's three syllables. How do you even fit that in?" he joked, adding that people are still debating the lyrics years after the song became a global worship anthem.
The interview then turned into what can only be described as a celebration of youth ministry chaos.
Asbury and the hosts reacted to unbelievable stories sent in by listeners, including:
- A mysterious man dressed like Jesus wandering into a worship service while security watched nervously.
- A youth lock-in interrupted by a woman who had secretly wandered through the church while students slept.
- A middle schooler who tried to toast a Pop-Tart with a lighter and Axe body spray, accidentally setting a picnic table on fire.
- A scavenger hunt that nearly ended with teenagers being arrested after staging a fake robbery at a gas station.
- A youth camp speaker who fired what students believed was a real gun during an altar call, prompting someone to call the police.
- Hilarious discussions about bizarre youth group games, 30-Hour Famine events, lock-ins, and the unforgettable mishaps that seem to follow church camps everywhere.
Throughout the episode, Asbury showed a side of himself fans rarely see-quick-witted, self-deprecating, and completely willing to laugh at both himself and church culture.
Between honest testimony, theological humor, and stories that sound too outrageous to be true, it's easy to see why many fans are already calling this one of the funniest Christian podcast appearances of the year.
