I have been humbled and privileged to be active in leading worship. I originally had contempt for the modern worship music movement because it seemed to suffer from fluffy, man-centered lyrics, and somewhat overly-simplistic musical compositions. It could not hold a candle to the great hymns of the faith lyrically or compositionally. I love hymns for both those reasons. But I also like contemporary music and I knew there had to be a way to have high quality contemporary music that was doctrinally rich. Well, the good news is that there is doctrinally rich, well-written music out there. It just takes a lot of searching to find it! The man-centeredness of modern worship music has caused me to not use a lot of popular songs.
I also believe that worship must be experiential, but it must be anchored and governed by Scripture. It is far easier for one to sing about how much one loves the Lord, after having sung to Him about His attributes. To sing of our love for Him irrespective of His attributes is to extol our ability to love God. That's usually why the singing is better after a great sermon than before it; it is clear to whom we're singing! John Piper writes that God is glorified to the extent that man is satisfied in Him! He argues that the pleasure one experiences during worship is a legitimate motivation for worship; because God is the supplier of the pleasure. In a desire to not become too charismatic in our worship, conservative evangelical churches have minimized the emotional aspect of worship. God wants our hearts along with our minds. Proper theology first, then the proper emotions.
I use the marriage relationship as a metaphor for examining worship-since we are referred to in Scripture as the "bride of Christ", and He "The Bridegroom". A flawed metaphor admittedly, but I believe everything in life is for demonstrating a spiritual truth. If the only praise a husband receives from his wife is "I love you", one would think that would be enough. But imagine that all the wife says is "I love you". Hour after hour, day after day. As time passed, the husband would grow tired of hearing it and it might even begin to lose its meaning. It would become just another greeting. Now contrast that to the wife that praises her husband with "You are such a faithful husband, you provide for our family so well, you see to the spiritual leadership of the family in such a caring way, I love you so much, you make me feel special", etc. This praise is far weightier because it adds new dimensions to the wife's love of her husband. The husband's attributes make him more lovable. He probably has developed those traits to be lovable to his wife!
You may think, this seems like the love of the wife toward the husband is conditional, and our love towards God should be unconditional, shouldn't it? Actually, we need not concern ourselves over this because God is the only being where conditional love is good! He loves to be praised and adored because of His attributes (conditions). They are altogether lovely! He wants us to focus on who He is, not how much love we can muster. So worship music needs to be focused on His attributes, theology, and doctrine. And only then do the "I love you" songs have meaning. And don't get me wrong, we need to tell God that we love Him in a warm and sincere way!
If you examine most church bulletins, you will see the music portion of the service referred to as "Praise and Worship". I try to remember that the sermon, the offering, and prayer is as much worship, if not more so, than the music. At BBC we have changed the bulletin to read: "Worship in song". I think its good not to make music preeminent. God's Word should be preeminent! All the more reason why our singing should be taken directly from, and based on Scripture!"