Michael Horton on "worship style"

"Far too many conservative critics of the contemporary worship style accuse those who favor it of shifting the focus from worship to entertainment. But this can easily become a cheap shot. After all, I've seen plenty of worship services in which the style of high culture provided the same entertainment value as the style of pop culture used in the church down the street. But even if one criticizes the CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) worship style for making the congregation an audience instead of the performers, this fails on at least two counts. First, it does not fairly describe CCM worship, at least in most of the contexts in which I have witnessed it. I do not doubt that advocates of the pop worhsip style and their congregations see themselves as heightening congregational participation in worship. And, for the most part, they have achieved this. ... My second objection to this common criticism is that it's just not very good, even if it were true. ... I have argued that the service is chiefly a matter of who God is and what he is doing for us. He is not entertaining us, to be sure. We are not in that sense an audience. But we are his covenant people, and his work for us in Word and deed is central; our response is just that - response - and should be treated as such in the service."

(Horton, A Better Way, p. 179).