Contemporary vs Puritan worship: Washer's warning

[SinnerSavedByChrist]

Paul Washer - Worship Music can be Dangerous - YouTube

Brother Paul Washer on the dangers of contemporary worship. 1:50 minutes long. For those of you who were interested in his views on the RPW / EP, he expresses it at around 0:40.

I would rather a puritan worship that looks and sounds "boring" to ticklish ears and sinful hearts, than one which God hath not commanded.

(Been reading and contemplating the RPW, not sure whether to be EP, or just Pro-Psalms yet. Got a few issues to sort).

 

[JimmyH]

I have to agree with you. I have a good friend who is a deacon in a nearby Baptist church. He is the guitar player in the church band and is quite good. They play electric, drums, it is AFAIC rock and roll with Christian lyrics. I don't mind 'contemporary Christian music' on the radio, I even like some of it. For worship in church on Sunday I prefer singing hymns out of the hymnal with a piano player accompanying. I have recently left my home SBC church for an OPC where the worship is the old traditional way, and I am very glad that I did.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

I can't recall how many time I've heard people judge the merits of a church's worship on the sensation it gave them. Many have this experience in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches with their "smells and bells." But the same kind of allure can be found in contemporary churches that use music and lighting to work crowds into a trance which is then blamed on the Holy Spirit's "movement."

I would also add to this architecture. Often Roman Catholics will seek to legitimize their worship by appealing to the sense that one has walking into a great Cathedral. The problem with this is obvious. One can have a similar experience of awe walking into a civic building like the capital building in Washington DC (it made me emotional anyway). But that sense of awe is not in response to God's Work but of man's. So I am very leery of those who place any store by the kind of building worship takes place in as if it made any more or less pleasing to God. This is false and dangerous.

Reformed worship, biblical worship, is not appealing to the flesh. It engages the heart and mind with God's word and prayer so that biblical emotions of joy, peace, and awe for God's glory in salvation may flow from them. Reformed worship doesn't seek to remove the role of emotions in worship, but to put them in their proper place -- subordinate to the Word and Prayer.