1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 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 create a more welcoming, flexible, and inclusive worship space that promotes community-led worship practices through education about theologically sensitive, contextually appropriate, and aesthetically fitting church architecture.
To enable the congregation and community to integrate worship into their daily lives by making the cathedral space available and facilitating varied acts of worship for people to engage in the space.
To learn about worship symbolism and accessibility concerns that hinder welcoming all worshipers through engaging in learning groups that explore relevant resources and analyze other worship spaces.
To create sacred space by experimenting with seating arrangement, various forms of artwork, and sensory experiences in innovative and interactive ways, while being responsive to the needs of ministry during the pandemic.
Christopher Grundy
To foster imagination about worship spaces that can help to draw people into a deeper relationship with their natural environment, experience that environment as sacred and sacramental, form them spiritually as agents of ecological justice and recovery, and help them to process and respond faithfully to increasing ecological disasters.
To create a unique opportunity for worshipers to recognize the beauty, majesty, mystery, and holiness of God by developing a dedicated worship space in a barn, and facilitating worship experiences that foster a sense of holy vocation with and among all of God's creation as participants, rather than observers.
Lindsey Hanson
To investigate emerging theological issues in worship with scholars and practitioners by reflecting on a cross-disciplinary collaboration of dance, architectural design, and film within a worship space, and empowering local ministry leaders and churches to discern theologically and imagine liturgically the characteristics of Christian worship in their own context by engaging curated online media.
To facilitate the full participation of worshipers from all faith backgrounds by enhancing both the physical space for worship and the forms of music and visual arts in the liturgy.
To explore the story of the shared neighborhood of seven churches in order to cultivate worship that is responsive to God's work in the churches' immediate context.
To reflect the church's renewed mission to become a sanctuary for the city by broadening worshipers' imagination for worship and deepening its engagement with the community.
Benjamin Meagher
To study how the physical design and layout of a worship space influences the experience and reflects the religious identity of the congregation that worships there.
To raise up the value of sacred space by exploring how the practice and visually marking of sacred space in the chapel can extend into the rest of the campus.
