1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 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 engage the congregation in learning about diverse cultural and linguistic worship resources such as music, visual art and dance and to use them in worship to better reflect the growing diversity in the community and in the congregation.
To develop a worship planning group of youth and adults who will host workshops and plan worship using what has been learned.
To express the broad range of worship expressions that appear in the Bible through workshops to create liturgies, prayers, responsive readings, music, poems and art with a focus on the Psalms and Revelation.
To engage in a process of learning and reflection on the use of music drama and art that will create intergenerational worship services for the congregation and other churches in the community who have been invited to learn with them.
To collaborate with four local churches of different denominations to encourage ecumenism through the study and implementation of faithful communion practices by offering workshops on Eucharistic and evangelical hospitality as well as tools for using the arts in worship.
To create liturgies and other worship resources that will assist multicultural communities to bridge the gap between English and Spanish speaking worshipers and to offer workshops that will guide congregations in the use of the resources.
To develop cell groups that include members of the prison congregation, partner churches and ex-offenders which will develop communion services to be used in the prison and community congregations.
To develop a focus each month on topics such as the call to worship, doxology, and the practice of listening that will lead the congregation to understand worship as something that acts upon and forms us to be the community that God calls us to be.
to more deeply live into their mission statement Centered in Christ, Called to the Core City, and committed to being a multicultural community reconciled to each other through Christ
To provide training for worship leaders and congregations for the liturgical seasons of the Christian year through a series of events that will include traditional, contemporary, ecumenical, and global worship resources.
To immerse the congregation in a year-long study of the centrality of the Lord's Supper in worship that will lead to the creation of liturgical art and new sacramental furniture that is a reminder of communion as the center of the life of the church as the congregation moves to a permanent worship space.
To offer training for worship leaders of all ages in theological foundations of worship and musical and artistic abilities with a focus on developing the gifts of youth of several congregations in leading worship.
