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.
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.
To promote reconciliation between Indigenous and settler Christians by co-creating worship songs through an ethical cross-cultural collaboration.
To cultivate cross-cultural worship exchanges by exploring music as storytelling that expresses resilience, cultural identity, and gospel joy in Antiguan congregations.
To equip congregations to engage ministries of justice in their worship by hosting training workshops in which leaders engage songs, rituals, prayers, and sermons focused on justice.
Jonathan Calvillo
To examine how hip-hop can be a resource for building spiritual community among Latinx diaspora by modeling how to integrate experiences of race, social engagement, and spiritual support in ministry with youth.
To invite worshipers into the depth and richness of God’s promises by weaving liturgy with the arts through collaborations with local artists for Advent, Lenten, Holy Week, and Pentecost services and through the development and dissemination of artistically inspired service plans.
To discern the theological distinctiveness and ethnocultural diversity of the church’s music by providing tools to evaluate CCLI Top 100 praise music from an Anabaptist theological perspective.
To create musical settings with local rhythms for the liturgical calendar to provide a more contextualized worship experience attuned to the Puerto Rican culture and folklore.
To strengthen those who lead worship by deepening their unity with one another while cultivating skills in planning and leading worship that integrates cultural expressions with the narrative of God’s story.
To engage with science in worship by piloting worship "experiments" in five partner churches involving interviews with worship leaders and scientists and the creation of new worship resources.
Mischa Willett
To foster greater appreciation for the diverse ways Christianity has shaped human creativity and to explore ways in which Christian literary genres have influenced the spiritual lives of Christian communities through an analysis of hymnody, devotionals, spiritual autobiography, sermons, allegory, and more.
To deepen scriptural reflection and to connect with the community by creating films for use in public worship that feature creative storytelling and dialogue on contemporary issues.
