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 create liturgies for workers that lift up the particular needs, laments, and blessings within the workers’ vocations.
To engage in liturgies and educational roundtables that facilitate inclusive attitudes and practices that welcome those who have been historically marginalized.
To cultivate holy curiosity about what God is doing in the world and in the lives of fellow congregants by connecting our story with God’s story through retreats, guest presenters, and the crafting of new liturgies.
To empower lay leaders to create digital worship services that enable lay leaders in other rural churches to facilitate worship without a clergy member.
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.”
To integrate ancient liturgy and prayer with expressions of worship such as art, meal sharing, and communal serviceso as to strengthen connections between gathered worship and daily life.
To create a formation program on liturgy, theology, and musicianship that equips and encourages Spanish-speaking parish musicians and music ministers.
Sarah Kathleen Johnson
To facilitate healing and ethical responses to public crises by studying the unintended consequences of ritual responses to mass shootings, the enduring legacy of colonialism, and climate disasters.
To enlarge worshipers’ understanding of living a sacramental life to include praying through acts of earth care and environmental justice, through crafting creation-focused liturgies, hosting guest speakers, and encouraging environmentally ethical living.
To help small congregations cultivate the practice of identifying and witnessing to God’s work in their communities by training pastors and church leaders in the practice of narrative worship.
Julie Canlis
To foster deep experiences of living in Christ among Christian worshipers through an exploration of how the early church formed the liturgical calendar.
To welcome, represent, and empower people of color and young adults in liturgical and musical leadership by expanding celebrations of nine major feasts and fasts with diverse musical expression and development of thematic seasonal worship series with reflection guides.
