1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 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.
Find resources related to the learning from the Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grants Program.
To form worshipers whose daily life flows into worship and whose worship flows back into daily life by training participants in liturgy, lay preaching, and table hospitality.
Aaron Howard
To encourage racial reconciliation in the church by creating a multimedia resource to equip worshiping communities to develop multiracial gospel choirs.
To diversify the cultural representation of the music used in Mennonite churches by developing best practices for creating, sourcing, curating, and hosting resources from a greater diversity of worship expressions.
To implement embodied and intercultural worship led by pastors, artists, and community members, to renew faith through narrative, liturgy, and artistic expression, and to strengthen both resilience and hope.
To promote racial healing and to become a more multiethnic, multicultural, and multigenerational congregation by developing multicultural worship expressions and learning activities.
To promote unity in the global church and the integration of worship with daily discipleship by equipping worship leaders and musicians with resources for communion that invite congregations into worship that remembers Christ’s sacrifice, deepens worshipers’ participation, and extends hospitality and peace beyond the sanctuary.
To encourage vulnerability and authentic self- and cultural expression in worship by creating space to share new songs, artwork, and testimonies in worship.
To deepen engagement with a culturally broad array of sacred chant traditions in order to facilitate reconciliation between Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches.
To engage multilingual lay preachers from several congregations in a yearlong preaching workshop to strengthen their pastoral skills, expand kingdom impact in their communities, and cultivate sustainable leadership across diverse congregations.
To foster worship that welcomes a diverse community by developing an inclusive-language hymnal that includes multiple languages, promotes faithful anti-racism, and reflects the concerns and style preferences of young people.
To strengthen worship life by exploring how diverse worship traditions shape communion with God through Christ across cultures using the primary expressions of art and music.
To integrate psalms into corporate and private worship habits in an ecumenical setting, primarily through guided conversations and scholarly-artistic engagement with university students and local pastors.
