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.
First Community AME Church
To reflect theologically on communal worship that incorporates prayer, praise, and servant leadership, in order to facilitate deeper participation and engagement with God in worship.
First Presbyterian Church, Bellingham
To increase worshipers' awareness of God by engaging worship through different pathways and through the various ways members of the community connect with God.
Good Shepherd United Church of Christ
To promote a more meaningful encounter with God's word in the text and in worshipers' lives by engaging diverse artistic experiences of scripture in worship.
Gustavus Adolphus College
To listen to and reflect on students’ experience of worship and to experiment with music, visual art, and space in worship in order to deepen and diversify student leadership and participation.
Mennonite Worship and Song Committee
To educate and empower lay leaders and congregations to understand and embrace the various worship cultures that are part of the Mennonite song tradition in North America.
Mililani Presbyterian Church and Preschool
To develop age-appropriate preschool chapel worship and classroom faith formation by exploring how children worship and connecting little ones' lives to God.
National Association of the Church of God (2020)
To use worship arts rituals as a tool to cultivate spiritual transformation in the lives of young people.
Serenity the Prince of Peace Church of God In Christ
To create a consortium of young adults who will be trained and mentored to design and execute a monthly ecumenical, multicultural, and multigenerational worship gathering.
Trinity UMC
To engage the local community in theological reflection on worship that deepens worshiper’s experience of God by enacting the word of God in many contexts.
African Resource Center of West Michigan
To foster unity among different African ethnic communities and awareness of varying worship needs and experiences by facilitating collaboration among worship leaders at African ethnic churches.
Bridge Disability Ministries
To develop a program that will assist churches in becoming physically, culturally, and spiritually accessible to people with disabilities, in order to create worshiping communities that honor the gifts and full participation of each person.
Capital District of the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church
To integrate engagement with God through the arts into worship by cultivating a community of artists who will serve in a variety of churches.