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 encourage baptism-oriented adult Christian formation across denominations by producing and disseminating high-quality and theologically robust training videos for congregations across North America.
To encourage meaningful connection to the idea of Christian community within a Hispanic context through the exploration of community-oriented worship practices.
To revitalize the congregation’s worship ministry and strengthen the spiritual life in our families by promoting the reading and understanding of the Bible through the celebration of family devotions based on Psalms.
In response to the challenges of the pandemic, to use the Psalms to explore lament, grief, and resilience by engaging in liturgical arts that tell worshipers' stories, name challenges and losses, and cultivate healing and hope.
To foster connection among the members of a multi-site church by participating together in common at-home worship practices, a sermon series delivered by pastors from throughout the multi-site church, and Benedictine prayer practices.
Demetrius K. Williams
To explore the cross of Christ in African American Christian experience as motivation for piety, political engagement, and social protest by researching spirituals, narratives, sermons, and other resources that highlight the importance of the cross of Christ for notions of freedom and the unity of humanity in the church's public witness.
To strengthen and deepen worshipers’ experience of God by engaging the Psalms through prayer, study, contemplation, service and the arts.
To deepen young people’s engagement with Scripture, with one another, and with their community by training them to lead worship through dance, music, and mime, using the Psalms as a model.
To use Vertical Habits to disciple young adults with developmental disabilities, and to help churches break down barriers to the full, conscious, active participation of those young adults in worship.
To shape the language, prayer, and song of a worshiping community by composing new songs based on a deepened engagement with the Psalms, informed by their use in various faith traditions.
To unite persons of different generations in multilingual Chinese-Canadian churches by fostering collaboration between pastors and worship leaders and by strengthening intergenerational engagement with the Psalms.
To promote healing through trauma-informed worship that engages worshipers with the Psalms as expressions of the experiences of God’s people.
