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 train children and youth in understanding of worship and in worship skills, including media technology and leading music, to equip them to lead worship at Lighthouse Full Life Center.
To make new worship music resources of all styles accessible to worshipers globally by creating an online worship community that participates in training workshops, fosters the creation of new music, and provides access to a variety of worship resources.
To discern the theological distinctiveness and ethnocultural diversity of the church’s music by providing tools to evaluate CCLI Top 100 praise music from an Anabaptist theological perspective.
To promote spiritual healing and renewal, cultural expression, and deeper connection between the congregation and the broader community through the development of a weekly gospel jazz worship service.
To cultivate practices of embodied worship that reflect the diversity of the congregation and the surrounding community to deepen capacity for communal embodied worship.
Hyun Woo Kim
To empower Asian American churches to embrace their cultural heritage, reconcile intergenerational differences, and re-envision worship in ways that reflect their congregants’ diverse identities and experiences by integrating Asian cultural elements into Western hymnody and worship frameworks.
To promote unity within diversity in Christian worship by providing safe and hospitable spaces for multilingual songwriting processes among diverse groups, leading to the incorporation of multilingual songs into existing liturgies.
Harold Dorrell Briscoe
To research the historical and sociopolitical significance of Negro spirituals in movements of liberation, and to demonstrate through workshops, concerts, and an immersive learning trip how these spirituals can enrich modern Christian worship practices.
To create a formation program on liturgy, theology, and musicianship that equips and encourages Spanish-speaking parish musicians and music ministers.
Becca Whitla
To equip the Canadian church to use congregational song to further reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous peoples and to address questions relevant to the Canadian context through a conference and the development of shareable resources.
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.
To translate and publish a hymnal of bilingual Kreyol-English songs for use by new Haitian-Americans and neighboring church communities as a way to welcome and embrace one another through congregational song.
