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.
Fuller Theological Seminary
Jennifer Ackerman
Jennifer Ackerman
To study the impact arts-based training encouraging curiosity, creativity, and courage has on pastoral leadership to increase pastors' capacity to lead vibrant, justice-oriented communities of worship.
Howard University School of Divinity
Harold Dean Trulear
Harold Dean Trulear
To explore and disseminate best practices for shaping and sustaining a Christian social justice witness through corporate worship.
University of Alabama
Courtney O’Grady
Courtney O’Grady
To invite Catholic school practitioners (PK–12) to engage in self-study and group discussion as a means of reckoning with racism, ableism, and other injustices in American Catholic school practices, and then to reimagine Catholic schools as inclusive and justice-oriented worshiping communities.
Fresno Pacific University
Amy Whisenand
Amy Whisenand
To explore the relationship between singing and reconciliation in the church through hosting workshops for scriptural study, practice sharing, and collaboration.
Emory University Candler School of Theology
Susan Bigelow Reynolds
Susan Bigelow Reynolds
To study public, lay-led Way of the Cross (Via Crucis) rituals that engage contemporary social injustices in light of the cross, exploring how communities on the margins of church and society use public ritual to practice theological agency.
The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest
Brandon Crowley
Brandon Crowley
To support and engage the public worship of African American congregations by creating a workbook that teaches pastors and local church leaders how to be more inclusive of Black women and LGBTQIA+ folx in their worship designs.