1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 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 promote reconciliation between Indigenous and settler Christians by co-creating worship songs through an ethical cross-cultural collaboration.
To create an intentional worshiping community of adult disciples seasoned in liturgical leadership to gather in worship and cross-pollinate their unique worship practices, culminating in leadership at the Disciples Worship and Arts Institute that welcomes participants from across the Christian church.
To help congregations and individual Christian worshipers grow in their understanding and practice of lament in the context of a diverse, collaborative community by equipping them with resources to weave lament into regular worship services and into a collaborative ecumenical Ash Wednesday service.
To promote a healthy, unified, and Christ-centered community that reflects God’s diverse kingdom by developing multicultural worship and discipleship practices.
To diversify the cultural representation of the music used in Mennonite churches by developing best practices for creating, sourcing, curating, and hosting resources from a greater diversity of worship expressions.
To pursue justice by enabling worship artists from the United States and Palestine to create rich liturgies and songs that reflect the lived realities of Palestinian Christians.
Becki Graves
To celebrate the diversity of Christianity through exploring the contemplative, Holiness, Evangelical, social justice, charismatic, and incarnational expressions of the Church as part of the process of creating original artistic, poetic, and musical stations of the cross to share in local churches.
To engage in spiritual practices of liturgical writing, reflection, prayer, and art to collaboratively create a community prayer book that will facilitate the spiritual growth and well-being of the community through both personal and communal use.
To design a dynamic and collaborative musical process and a multi-song piece to give voice to the ways in which God is moving through the voices of the marginalized.
To meet the increased demands on worship and arts leaders of in-person and online services through creating opportunities for mentorship, rotational leadership, and skill development.
To deepen connections between worshipers and to encourage a practice of recognizing the sacred in all of life by centering corporate worship and home groups on practices of shared attention, communal creation, and joyful expression.
To enhance spiritual connection among all age groups by creating generationally diverse worship teams, educating worship leaders about inclusive worship, and using intergenerational teams to plan worship and develop new liturgical resources.
