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 nurture the church’s preaching team, including active and potential preachers, through workshops, conferences, and team practices that nurture the preaching life.
Robert Dean
To resituate homiletics within a Christological and robustly trinitarian framework by examining prominent assumptions governing preaching today, in order to revitalize North American preaching for the sake of the formation of worshiping communities.
To prepare emerging pastors with contemporary preaching skills by engaging in a leadership development curriculum that uses retiring pastors as mentors.
To promote active intergenerational participation in worship by developing and promoting a homiletical method that encourages wondering, storytelling, and godly play.
Roland De Vries
To develop a seminary course and book chapter on interculturality in homiletics to equip preachers and emerging preachers to address the increasingly intercultural nature of their communities.
Carolyn B. Helsel
To encourage appreciation among Christian worshipers for our Jewish neighbors and reduce anti-Semitism by creating videos and written resources aimed at equipping preachers to approach biblical references to Jewish people through a framework of gratitude for our shared religious heritage.
Jake Myers
To create a series of free, open-access homiletical education videos that empower and equip bi-vocational preachers for more faithful, creative, and transformative service to the Church.
Sunggu A. Yang
To explore multidimensional preaching practices that meet listeners’ need to see, taste, feel, and even touch the compelling Word of the Triune God, resulting in a handbook to help preachers become more oriented to engaging contemporary listeners.
Sarah Travis
To create and field-test a preaching and liturgical resource addressing reconciliation among Settler Canadians and Indigenous peoples for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, based on two Calls to Action from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Carla Pezzia and Theodore James Whapham
To survey clergy and congregants regarding the state of homiletics in the Catholic church in order to support Catholic preachers in improving their homilies and leverage liturgical preaching to reconnect with disengaged congregants.
Lis Valle-Ruiz
To study digitally mediated worship and preaching practices as it relates to the embodied experience, presence, and active participation from the perspectives of the worshipers.
Richard Voelz
To create and field-test a workbook that will equip pastors to walk with adolescent preachers as they prepare to preach in public worship and other congregational contexts.
