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 deepen worshipers’ practice of joy in a community marked by suffering by creating Psalm-influenced liturgical art together.
To strengthen the role of testimony in worship by helping worshipers tell their stories through visual art, original song, and written narrative.
To teach worshipers to engage art as an act of worship and to engage in Christian art-making, in order to better participate in the liturgy with body, mind, and soul.
To create a robust sending rite that empowers and commissions worshipers to engage God’s work in the world in their daily lives.
To fully integrate the arts in the worship life of the church through collaboration among liturgists, musicians, and visual artists, in order to express and embody the attributes of God and the identity of worshipers’ as God’s beloved people.
To deepen worshipers’ understanding of the triune God by engaging in and reflecting on the dynamism of jazz music in Christian liturgy.
To learn about inclusive worship in order to craft creative liturgies that allow for the full, conscious, active participation of all members of the community.
To cultivate an awareness of God’s glory by establishing shared rhythms and spaces to connect daily life and corporate worship.
To expand and strengthen the communal nature of campus worship by exploring the relationship between liturgy and spiritual disciplines and by engaging visual art as a form of intercessory prayer.
To create a lectionary for undergraduate academic communities that integrates the academic and liturgical calendars in order to facilitate holistic spiritual formation in campus worship.
To explore the ways the liturgy facilitates hospitality as a Christian liturgical practice in order to be open and welcoming to all people.
To facilitate formation through worship by implementing new practices from Celtic spirituality that engage the head, heart, and hands of all worshipers.
