1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2025 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
CICW has awarded Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grants for over 20 years to teacher-scholars and worshiping communities in 45+ states and provinces and across 40+ denominations and traditions—including Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, non-denominational, and other Protestant communities.
While worship styles and practices vary greatly across these traditions, the grant projects typically explore at least one of CICW’s ten core convictions related to worship. Explore the hundreds of projects we’ve funded across both streams of the program.
To invite people into the solemnity and joy of the eucharist by focusing on collaboratively created art.
To explore contextual methods of proclamation in a dinner and spirituality service that facilitates deeper participation of the community in worship.
Lis Valle-Ruiz
To study digitally mediated worship and preaching practices as it relates to the embodied experience, presence, and active participation from the perspectives of the worshipers.
To educate and empower lay leaders and congregations to understand and embrace the various worship cultures that are part of the Mennonite song tradition in North America.
Nathan Myrick
To identify, through ethnographic research, the myriad ways that musical worship participates in human flourishing, and to share these insights with Christian leaders in order to promote healthy and vibrant communities of Christian fellowship and worship.
To develop age-appropriate preschool chapel worship and classroom faith formation by exploring how children worship and connecting little ones' lives to God.
To use worship arts rituals as a tool to cultivate spiritual transformation in the lives of young people.
To nurture community within the congregation and the neighborhood by promoting active participation in worship through the arts and the preached Word.
To break down barriers to full participation in worship by identifying the ways people may be prevented from feeling welcomed or included and creating new practices that welcome all.
To create and pilot participatory intergenerational worship resources that facilitate collaborative worship in a variety of contexts.
To create a consortium of young adults who will be trained and mentored to design and execute a monthly ecumenical, multicultural, and multigenerational worship gathering.
To initiate a contemplative worship service that uses participatory and sensually rich gestures, silence, and Celtic music in order to cultivate worshipers’ imagination of God.
