So here's the thing.
I love contemporary worship, modern Christan music from the likes of Chris Tomlin, Miachel W Smith, Hillsong and other such artists really draws me close to God.
The issue is I see a lot of these bands as very self centered and self pleasing and worship to God should be ALL about Him and not what I get pleasure or enjoyment out of.
When I read the Bible and look at how the Jews in particular worshiped then and today there's a huge difference.
Orthodox and more inward and reflective worship seems to be how Jews and the early Christian church worshipped.
What if anything does God say about this Biblically.
As much as I love contemporary worship, I'd rather worship in a way that is pleasing to God than is pleasing to me and I've really started to worry that I may not be doing the right thing.
Any advice/input in greatly appreciated.
I actually think this question can get pretty complicated, and we need to be careful not to get legalistic about it.
Something I might argue is that there's a reason why traditional Christian worship has, in its substance, remained virtually unchanged for the last two thousand years; the traditional liturgy is very deliberately the way it is to carry us through the service in reverence and celebration of God.
One of the most surprising things I personally discovered, having grown up with contemporary praise and worship services and later in life encountering traditional liturgical worship was how rich and saturated with Scripture the liturgy was. I was used to hearing a Bible reading at church of course, but what shocked me was how the entire liturgy, when I experienced it, reverberated with Scripture--you couldn't escape it even if you tried.
I've also come to appreciate the emotional nuance of the liturgy. Having grown up in those contemporary services I feel like there was often only two switches: happy happy or weeping on the floor. In the liturgy there is joy, there is sorrow, there is fear, there is awe. There are the subtle joys, such as when I go up to receive the Lord's Supper, and there are the deep, liberating joys when, after the somber and sober season of Lent and the deep despair of Good Friday I join my Hallelujah to all the voices of the congregation on Easter morning. And there is room to breathe, my emotional situation is fickle, I don't always feel happy even when the occasion is happy, nor do I necessarily feel the sorrow I ought to feel in regard to my sin; I am fickle and unreliable. But it's really not about how I feel, and it's okay if my emotional state on a given Sunday doesn't match the mood of the service; I can still slow down, join and participate in the work of God's people in confessing our sin, giving thanks to God, celebrating God's grace and gifts, and hear the Word I so desperately need to hear.
If you were to ask me if I think this is preferable to most contemporary services, I would say yes. But I would never want to suggest that those whose services are of the more modern kind aren't worshiping God, or that somehow their worship is less authentic--that would be wrong. God receives their worship all the same. But I certainly believe that there are many things that are missing in that kind of worship that can only be found in the historic liturgy of the Christian Church.
I am still, regularly, learning new things to appreciate about the liturgy. And I suspect I'll continue to learn more and appreciate more for the rest of my life. One of those things is that it is very difficult to adequately explain or describe the liturgy, the liturgy is something that can really only be experienced.
-CryptoLutheran