75 thoughts on “GOH: Who Is On The Lord’s Side”

    2. ‘Ware the snark! I don’t know anything about his ministry/theology and I’m not sure in any case what it has to do with this video, but I was really impressed with his talent. Not my kind of music, but beautifully performed. I think personal attacks should be saved for people like Greg…. Ha ha ha! Kidding, Greg, I know you’d be bored without something to be peeved about.

  2. I liked it. He doesn’t seem to lack self respect. I’ve always wondered how people pull off the timing on synchronizing something like this. I assume they have to have some kind of help more than just knowing the timing or tapping toes to keep time.

    1. He probably recorded it ahead of time, using a click track (metronome) or listening to his previously recorded parts to stay in sync. Then all he would need to do is to listen to the recording and lip sync for the video.

      1. Having recorded several times myself, that sounds easier than it really is.

        I say, good job, man. I love this song, for the record. It beats some honky-tonk, nasally, slightly inharmonious arrangement of the song.

        My two cents. 🙂

  3. I liked the arrangement, but it’s not BJU-style Fundyland. I also know that church. It was one of our sister churches in eastern North Carolina.

  6. He visited a local Bob Jones fundy church in Greenville last year (Morningside Baptist). So as much as I kind of like his arrangement, I’m not so sure about his ministry.

  7. pretty cool web site. Here is a tech savy Fundie. He is obviously in the revivalist camp and frame of mind. “Revival can’t be worked up; it must be prayed down.”
    I do like one of his quotes, “If the living are not alive, what hope is there for the dead?” At least he recognizes the Fundamental problem of Americanized Fundamentalism.

    Here we see fundieism all gussied up in a slick tech package but… Fundie is as fundie does. This is what the next generation of Fundies will look like.

    1. His website isn’t that slick. At first glance, I pick up several div issues and such that a tech-saavy person would be able to notice and fix promptly. It is probably a cookie-cutter WYSIWYG template imported to a bootleg copy of Dreamweaver MX…jus sayin. 🙂

      Plus, I’ll admit his big banner “pushing” Frank Garlock’s book was an automatic turn-off.

  8. he’s very talented for sure, but speaking of fundy flashbacks, the first cd’s i bought after i threw away all my “rock music” were by that Christian group Acapella (whom my pastor STILL didn’t like – “why are they so HAPPY?”, he said. no joke).

    1. I really liked Glad, but my parents had major concerns because someone told them that Glad did a concert where they wore jeans with holes in them. They let me listen to it, but it was real stretch for them.

    1. Yeah, I hadn’t seen this one, but I’ve seen some of his other videos, and I liked them. Don is certainly right about this guy being representative of the way Fundyism (or at least some of its streams) is going.

  10. Cloning: Now you can be TOTALLY separated from EVERYONE else and still have your own IFB singing group!

    😉

    2. You can have your own choir, and your own congregation, while you’re at it.
      You probably won’t face much dissent if you look out at 200 of yourself when you preach.

  11. Ha! He was my roommate and good friend at Fundy U! He actually does have a good voice and some genuine musical talent. I remember listening to him piece together all his projects in our dorm room, and enjoying every minute of it.

  13. Be nice in your commenting. This person who graciously submitted this is a SFL reader. 🙄 (JK- it does put another perspective on how we view people though.)

  17. Well, it’s not my favorite song, due to how it reminds me of some places/things/people, but I must say that he did a great job. Singing without accompaniment is just so clear and pure– I like it. I’m gonna go see if he did any other songs…

  18. I like “a capella” music and enjoyed this. A little odd to have a video of six copies of the guy singing, but I just enjoyed the music.

  19. He used his God given talents to give praise to God and had fun doing it. That’s ministry!

    1. If you could recruit him for your choir, it would step up the quality a notch or two. Just sayin’.

  22. While my music taste is more Getty/Sovereign Grace these days, I still love Ben’s music – I find it creative and talented (not to mention God-honoring as the old time evangelists would say…).

  23. That’s funny – Ben and I are friends from the couple of times he filled in with the gospel quartet I traveled with. As fundies go he’s pretty cool. I agree he’s the archetype of a next-generation fundy, though I could live with his brand of fundamentalism far easier than the last generation.

    What is it with all my old fundy friends showing up on SFL all of the sudden?

      1. Calvary Quartet, five years. Ironically singing hard-core fundy music and being portrayed as what “true” Christian music was supposed to sound like contributed to my exodus; one of the reasons I left fundyism was because traveling to so many churches made me realize that all the crazy isn’t tied up in just one or two churches; I saw it just about *everywhere* we went. Credit where credit is due: I made some good friends in those churches. But the things that turned me off to the movement were far to widespread for me to dismiss the quirks as simply local.

      2. Calvary Quartet, five years. Ironically singing hard-core fundy music and being portrayed as what “true” Christian music was supposed to sound like contributed to my exodus; one of the reasons I left fundyism was because traveling to so many churches made me realize that all the crazy isn’t tied up in just one or two churches; I saw it just about *everywhere* we went. Credit where credit is due: I made some good friends in those churches. But the things that turned me off to the movement were far too widespread for me to dismiss the quirks as simply local.

        2. I swear George caused a server glitch. In grand fundy MOG fashion, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

  25. He’s affable in his presentation, and it certainly is creative, and the harmony is great. The old gospel songs are a part of the musical tradition of American Christianity, so a unique presentation of them that doesn’t demean them is a good way to present them. As somebody mentioned, if this is the way “new Fundamentalism” is going with its music, it’s more appealing than old Fundamentalism. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if some old fundies clamored and complained about his upbeat, acapella presentation as being worldly or too modern (or something, just fill in the blank.)

  26. Wow, that was awesome! It says in the credits that he’s from Wilson, NC, and whenever I take the train, I pass through that town.

    This guy has a lot of talent and awesome tech skills.

    I’m also happy to see a post full of positive reactions. 🙂

  29. I’m not a fan of fundybaptist-style music but this tune was beautifully executed and quite creative.

    Jim K.

  31. I listened to it again, and I am pretty sure he is using a (harmonizer) Its a techno device that just multiplies a single voice, there are some other tricks he is using but the harmony is so dead on I think it would be virtually impossible for him to record layers and sing live and then record. For anyone old enough to remember the Carpenter’s, they were among the first to use this technique, you can hear it on alot of their music. Btw Karen Carpenter is one of my all-time favorite singers!

  32. I used to hate it when I would show up to church and someone was wearing the same suit and tie as me.
    Imagine the problem times 6.
    I need to stop shopping at TJ Maxx.

  33. i knew ben. he was a nice guy. and kind of a fringe fundy at the time, i felt. as for the song, i could be wrong, but i think i heard just a little bit of auto-tune in there somewhere…

  34. not sure I liked the song itself, considering when the phrase “Who is on the Lord’s side” does not precede an evangelist outreach, but the destruction of those that oppose God…
    However, it was neat to see how he does it. Only one part of the song was a bit ‘off’, but it does sound good for the most part.

  35. Yep, I have to cast my vote for Karen as well. I remember when she passed. My heart broke, and broke again when it was revealed how. 🙁

    “It’s a dirty ol’ shame when all you get from love is a love song.” 😉

    2. Me too, Don! I have their cd’s and I read their biography and the brother was very persnickety about overlaying the harmonies or whatever.

  36. yeah, sounds a lot like glad… minus the “scooping”… haha i used to laugh whenever i got in trouble for “scooping”.

  37. Ben is incredibly talented- I don’t know of anyone else with the breadth of musical abilities that he has.

  38. I find it hilarious when he’s singing the line “WE are on the Lord’s side!” (emphasis added) and he’s the only one he could get to join his acappella group…

  39. Wow what a voice! Beautiful arrangement and easy to listen to. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, especially on this website. And kudos to him for pulling this off. Easy to scoff when you haven’t tried to do something like this yourself.

  41. Oh my goodness. I work with Auto-Tune on a regular basis, and this is clearly over-corrected. He’s probably using Melodyne or something similar, though. Christian music always has its phases …

  42. This is so funny to me because I graduated from high school with Ben’s younger brother, know his family all very well and used to grow up with Ben coming to my church for months at a time. His family and mine are very close. However, he recently has decided to be KJV only which honestly breaks my family’s and my heart. Every single one of their family, minus maybe one, has incredible music talent and good tech savvy. I always thought he would make it out of Fundyland, but apparently he’s yet another victim (maybe someday he’ll get to be a “great man of God”). I say all this because he really is a great guy and has a huge heart. I think it has just been misplaced due to several circumstances, unfortunately. Anyway, great singing!

  43. The harmonies are cool. He spent way too much time on this though. I met him back in the day when he visited the IFB church I grew up in.

  44. I know nothing about the man or his affiliations and ministries, but I like this video! I like acappella, especially when singing hymns. Really lets you hear the richness in the human voice (not sure if that made much sense, but I don’t know how else to say it). Very creative video!

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