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.
Campbell AME Church of Media
To employ liturgical worship, singing, music, and other learning activities such as book and movie discussion to promote racial healing and community.
Ravensworth Baptist Church
To decolonize worship life by auditing the liturgy, music, preaching, and sacred spaces of the church in order to fully live into the church’s commitment to antiracism and its mission of “Sharing Love, Doing Justice, and Building Community.”
Central Christian Church (2023)
To become a more hospitable and anti-racist church through training and reflection to deconstruct white-centered worship norms and by expanding the multiplicity of non-Eurocentric ways that we engage in worship.
Chasing Justice Together
To equip emerging BIPOC worship artist activists to shape their local ministries to develop a prophetic imagination that celebrates the goodness and beauty of the justice God seeks for our world.
Fellowship Center for Racial Reconciliation
To equip local church leaders to worship by letting “justice roll down” in their lives, by training cohort members to address structural racial disparities, and by developing a theological framework that highlights God’s desire for shalom and the advocacy for the oppressed found in scripture.