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.
Faith United Methodist Church
To pursue unity and reconciliation through deepening worshipers’ understanding and practices of Holy Communion.
First Baptist Church Ashland
To foster intergenerational and interracial discipleship by writing daily liturgies together that connect with the weekly liturgies of corporate worship.
Fisher Street Church of God in Christ International
To deepen young people’s engagement with Scripture, with one another, and with their community by training them to lead worship through dance, music, and mime, using the Psalms as a model.
Freedom Outreach International: Ministry to the Military
To develop intentional worship models for military congregations that remove barriers to those who are experiencing PTSD and to facilitate connection through prayer.
Fuller Theological Seminary
Ed Willmington
Ed Willmington
To research six vocational competencies of well-formed worship leaders and develop a variety of resources to share insights related to the formation of worship leaders.
Harvey Browne Memorial Presbyterian Church
To unite two congregations in mutual partnership by facilitating full engagement in music, arts, and sacraments through bilingual worship.
Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church
To promote a vibrant experience of the Lord’s Supper in which worshipers experience God’s nourishing presence by engaging in new forms of communion liturgies.
Humble Walk Lutheran Church
To promote the role of visual and performing arts in the liturgy as a means of meeting God in worship, by providing opportunities for artists to lead the congregation.
Immanuel Congregational Church
To create a welcoming, multi-racial worship experience that explores God's liberation and justice through singing gospel music.
Kanata United Church
To help worshipers live into the salvation story in the liturgical year by participating in collaborative art-making that will be incorporated into corporate worship.
Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church
To draw mutually enriching connections between worship and social justice by crafting worship elements that flow out of and deepen worshipers’ participation in justice ministries.
Lee University
Lisa Milligan Long
Lisa Milligan Long
To survey worshipers' understanding of the effect of participation in the Lord's Supper, and to offer methods to leaders in a variety of denominational settings for deepening Eucharistic participation.