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 grow habits of common liturgical worship in school that extend to the home, engaging and expanding the spiritual imaginations of staff, parents, and students, by focusing on spiritual disciplines and diverse ecumenical worship resources.
To explore how sacred play in a worship setting engages children in making meaning of their faith, while also discovering creative ways of enhancing worship for both children and congregations.
To promote a deep understanding of how pipe organs can be used to lead, accompany, and inspire the community to sing by hosting four worship festivals that explore musical and liturgical territory not typically associated with the organ.
To foster ecumenical connections among twelve churches by participating in the creation of pottery to form the faith of worshipers as the theological imagery of God as the potter whose hands continue to mold and reform is carried into the worship of each church and into ecumenical worship gatherings.
To deeply integrate worship and other congregational activities so that the church’s engagement of cross-cultural relationships, education, justice, and collaboration weaves seamlessly with worship.
J.J. Wright
To teach Christian communities how to see grace and mercy in loss and suffering by enabling young people to contemplate difficult questions as they rehearse and perform the newly composed Passion for the Innocents.
Wonchul Shin
To provide Asian and Asian-American worshiping communities with rich Pan-Asian theological resources for their public worship practice as a form of public witness that will proclaim the dignity of the Asian and Asian-American community and transform the culture of anti-Asian violence and racism.
To enhance our bilingual worship service experience to impact our local church family and the online community, becoming a multicultural church.
To involve the children’s ministry and the youth ministry in public worship.
Melanie Ross
To research the worship music industry, Christian higher education, and congregational ministry, in order to explore the intersection of liturgy and economics, to provide a history of how worship became part of the commercial music and entertainment industry, and to understand the ways that congregations and Christian colleges that train future worship leaders have responded to this shift.
To enrich worship by engaging the arts in order to promote healing and understanding in the midst of social injustices.
Rebecca Slough
To explore how the spatial and visual dimensions of congregational worship shape diverse Anabaptist communities, in order to create resources that facilitate culturally-informed reflection on visual arts in worship and to curate visual art resources for use in Anabaptist worship.
