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.
Nathan Chase
To study the connection between sacramental practices and ordinary life (meal, ministry of touch, and oil) through three historical case studies from the early church and Roman Catholic liturgical practice to help Roman Catholic worshiping communities understand the historical origins of Eucharist, healing, and ordination.
Jennifer Lord
To encourage renewed engagement with the sacrament of baptism among Protestant Christians by studying baptismal practices and theology in Orthodox Christianity, with special emphasis on confession of sins as part of baptismal living.
To facilitate worship and learning opportunities centered around the sacraments of baptism and eucharist to help multicultural and multigenerational families in the local community become grounded in their faith.
To deepen worshipers’ understanding of being a baptismal community by creating liturgical resources in celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the Anabaptist tradition.
To build Christ-centered unity amid a fractured and polarized society by teaching about and promoting shared foundational Christian practices, including the sacraments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the engagement of scripture.
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 center the sacraments in worship by collaboratively creating artwork for worship that contextualizes images of bread, wine, and water for each season of the church year.
To strengthen worshipers’ experience of communion and to deepen the connections between Eucharistic worship and all areas of life by gathering parishioners for weekly opportunities to study, reflect, and practice community.
John D. Roth
To foster ecumenical conversations about baptism by hosting seminars for pastors and lay leaders using a newly created accessible study guide on the recent groundbreaking report of the international Lutheran-Mennonite-Roman Catholic Trilateral Dialogue on Baptism.
Christopher A. Stephenson
To develop a pneumatological perspective on baptism and the Lord's Supper that nurtures vibrant experiences of the Holy Spirit within traditional liturgical forms and practices, and to encourage substantial Pentecostal contributions to ecumenical dialogue on the sacraments.
John Vonder Bruegge
To produce new, collaborative translations of Jesus’ parables that both remain true to the Greek text and strive for a listenability in their oral presentation, and to gather those translations into a publication that equips worshiping communities to deliver the texts orally in worship.
To deepen worshipers' experience of the Eucharist by learning together, sharing testimonies, varying practices, and living into the connection of the Eucharist to mission.
