Current and Past Grants

Villanova University

Timothy Brunk

To promote the celebration of and reflection on the newly established Feast of Creation of Christ across ecclesial traditions by producing new liturgical resources for use in diverse churches across North America that will inspire worshiping communities to reconnect with the Creator and care for the sacred gift of creation.

Wartburg Theological Seminary

Jan Schnell

To examine how worship practices can hurt or exclude people at the margins, to analyze this research informed by trauma studies and liturgical theology, and to create pedagogical tools and liturgical resources that promote worship in which God’s welcome becomes lived experience.

Woodlawn Church

To reimagine weekly worship rehearsals as intentional spaces of spiritual formation, theological reflection, and multicultural leadership development, complemented by quarterly gatherings for deeper theological study, together to cultivate both current and emerging worship leaders who are spiritually grounded and equipped to lead unified bilingual worship.

You Need To Know Ministries

To enrich worship life across generations and promote active participation in worship by strengthening worship leadership skills in the areas of liturgical dance, drama, preaching and teaching, and corporate prayer.

Young Leaders Initiative, DBA Motor City Wesley

To form college students as worship leaders through a mentored cohort model that pairs students with practitioners in preaching, worship arts, and eucharistic baking in order to offer hospitality, faith flourishing, and renewed worship life.

Abilene Christian University

Jennifer Schroeder

To equip ministry leaders and parents with tools to create sustainable, inclusive worship practices that value children’s voices in singing, praying, preaching, scripture reading, and communion by exploring their participation with members of ministry leadership teams, both in and outside of children’s ministry.

Abilene Christian University

Brad East

To help Christians, especially evangelical Protestants, develop a renewed appreciation for and love of baptism by exploring how it can be integrated into a full-orbed vision of the Christian life and the church’s public worship.

Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church

To support worshipers with mental health challenges by promoting mental health awareness, training congregants to offer peer support, and encouraging mental well-being through music ministry.

Amity Baptist Church

To engage children, youth, young adults, and seniors in planning and leading worship in order to promote intergenerational faith formation, leadership development, and a renewed sense of unity.

Anglican Diocese of Edmonton

To create new baptismal resources that educate and encourage new believers in ways that respond to the needs of diverse twenty-first-century Christian families.

Arizona State University Foundation for a New American University

Neal A. Lester

To document how Black American spiritual worship practices support healing, justice, and community care through a community-partnered ethnographic research and teaching project.

Ashland Theological Seminary

Amy Davis Abdallah

To explore how Christians think about, experience, and mark death, both physical and metaphorical, in order to help Christians acknowledge death more meaningfully in their personal, small-group, and corporate worship.