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.
Holy Trinity Church
To reflect on the intersection of worship and culture and compose multiculturally accessible songs for worship to promote unity among diverse congregants and overcome racial and ethnic barriers.
Logan Square Ecumenical Alliance
To train members of four churches to tell their stories of faith in order to strengthen each congregation’s local worship practices and deepen a shared identity in an ecumenical, multicultural alliance.
Mustard Seed School (2016)
To facilitate culturally-varied worship experiences that will engage students in grades four through eight to make real connections with God in worship.
New Mount Zion Baptist Church
To promote active participation of all ages in worship through intergenerational activities throughout the liturgical calendar that tell the stories, customs and traditions of African American culture.
St Monica Catholic Community
To cultivate youth to lead as well-formed liturgical musicians and ministers, expanding their knowledge of worship in music, ritual, and text.
University Covenant Church
To promote worship that engages the congregation and surrounding community through cultural stories that show how God forms the identity of God’s people.
University of Dubuque
To bring together different demographics of language, ethnicity, and tradition on campus in worship and to share in fellowship and discipleship activities.
Emmanuel Reformed Church (2015)
To renew a Spanish worshiping community through communal practices of worship connected to art, dance, hospitality, and service.
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Rockford
To engage worshipers in a year of walking with Jesus by multisensory worship through the seasons of the church year and connections with worshipers' daily lives.
Lakewood Baptist Church
To build bridges in the local multicultural community through worship, education, outreach and training initiatives that develop stronger bilingual worship leaders.
Mayfield Central Presbyterian Church (2015)
To explore storytelling in worship through stories from scripture, congregational history, and the individual lives of disciples of Jesus Christ.
More Than 12 Church
To collaboratively plan multicultural worship services that present newly written biblically inspired psalms and multimedia experiences related to those psalms.