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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jennifer Lord
To renew Protestant worshiping communities in keeping the church year, through study of and teaching about how an Orthodox parish understands and is spiritually grounded in the church year.
To provide training in the theology and practice of leading worship in order to help people grow in faith and leadership and find belonging and purpose.
Debra Rienstra
To offer theological reflection and pathways of response about climate change to Christian communities in their worship, preaching, sacraments, Sabbath-keeping, faith formation, and community action.
To promote reconciliation between Indigenous and settler Christians by co-creating worship songs through an ethical cross-cultural collaboration.
To connect generations and strengthen community by launching a community choir that will integrate spiritual formation with musical practice.
To provide spiritual formation to online and in-person congregations through posting teachings on prayer, sabbath, generosity, service, and solitude in the church’s app.
To live into a theology of singing as sacramental presence by reflecting on the history of communal singing, practicing embodied and paperless singing, developing new song leaders, and composing new songs.
To deepen biblical and theological understanding of preaching and empower emerging leaders by developing a participatory model of sermon creation and presentation that intentionally involves youth worship leaders.
