Georgia pastor receives Dove Award for Songwriter of the Year

Gerald Harris

Mark Hall. Student pastor, Eagle's Landing First Church, lead vocalist, Casting Crowns

Mark Hall is the student pastor at Eagle’s Landing First Church, but his ministry extends far beyond the ministry of a local church. He is the lead vocalist in the Christian band known as Casting Crowns and was recently hailed as songwriter of the year by the Gospel Music Association.

Casting Crowns, comprising seven musicians who call the Atlanta area home, was nominated for four Dove Awards including, “New Artist of the Year” and “Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year.” Their smash hit If We Are The Body was nominated for “Pop/Contemporary Song of the Year” as well as the prestigious “Song of the Year.”

Hall received his “Dove” at the 35th annual GMA Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee April 28. Other Dove Award recipients included MercyMe, Jeremy Camp, Third Day and Stacie Orrico.

Hall says, “I’m in a Christian band because music may be the only sermon a student may listen to.” Hall declares that he prayed to receive Christ as a child, but didn’t learn how to feed himself and grow in the Word of God until he was 21.

As a child Hall was diagnosed with Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder and admits to spending most of his school years in Learning Disabled classes. “Satan used my fear of being exposed to the world as stupid to keep me from ever stepping out and trying anything,” he said. “Then when God called me into the ministry it really freaked me out.”

Hall continued, “I had this picture of a God who was building an army and needed the best of the best. He was going to fight the devil and needed the gifted and the strong and I was neither of those. But God began to teach me a very important truth. He doesn’t need me; He wants me.

Hall’s dyslexia certainly hasn’t hampered his ability to write stirring Christian music that connects not only with students, but fans of contemporary Christian music everywhere. He refers to his dyslexia as his thorn in the flesh and loves Paul’s words in I Corinthians 1 where he writes: “ … the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Hall emphasized, “God knew exactly what He was doing when He made me and He knew exactly what He was getting into when he placed me in the ministry. I am a youth pastor for over 400 students, and there are days when I throw up my hands and say, ‘I can’t do this! This is too much for me!’ It’s then that God tells me: ‘If I had wanted someone else, I would have called someone else.’”

The GMA Songwriter of the Year disclosed, “For 13 years I have been doing things I am not good enough to do, saying things I’m not smart enough to say and being a part of things I am not big enough to handle all because I’m taking God at His word and trying to follow Him one step at a time no matter where that step leads.”

In March Casting Crowns broke into the Billboard Top 100 chart. In the same month their second single record, Who Am I broke into the Top 10 in Christian Radio. Perhaps even more importantly God significantly used Mark Hall and Casting Crowns in the revival in southwest Georgia reported in the April 22 issue of The Christian Index. On the Friday night they provided leadership in the revival there were 127 who made professions of faith in Christ.

The GMA Music Awards will be broadcast on the UPN Network on May 28 at 8 p.m.