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 promote participation and leadership within Christian communities by diverse students who struggle to see themselves in the Christian story.
To help people rest and reflect more deeply in God by creating opportunities for communal contemplation of God’s love and presence in the world through engagement with nature and the creative arts.
To deepen our congregation's appreciation for the grand narrative of God’s saving work by studying eight major acts of God in the Bible and collectively creating artwork that depicts the Bible’s overarching story.
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 equip leaders to create a pilgrimage experience in their own context by together engaging the embodied experience of pilgrimage and developing worship resources for their communities out of that experience.
To enhance the theological and cultural diversity of worship in an increasingly diverse retirement community through educational events and guest worship leaders.
To disciple African American participants on the topics of prayer and spiritual growth through virtual meetings and an online platform, with special attention to the relationship between worship and discipleship.
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 encourage members to engage scripture by memorizing a weekly scripture passage with accompanying devotions, sermons, and other creative means.
Barry Whatley
To explore the vital role of poetic imagination and creative expression of poetry in enhancing spiritual formation and worship in the local church.
Jennifer Allen Craft
To help Christians recognize and confess how sin distorts our relationship to place and hinders our ability to love our neighbors, and to help the church develop artistic practices of placemaking that advance the kingdom of God by promoting justice, beauty, and connection.
To facilitate a deep engagement with scripture through a culture of God-centered storytelling that develops the habit of naming God as the main actor in stories from both scripture and worshipers’ lived experience.
