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.

Visual Arts
Select Year
Select State/Province

Bethel Univeristy

Becki Graves

To celebrate the diversity of Christianity through exploring the contemplative, Holiness, Evangelical, social justice, charismatic, and incarnational expressions of the Church as part of the process of creating original artistic, poetic, and musical stations of the cross to share in local churches.

Teacher-Scholar
Mishawaka, indiana
2024

Point University

Jennifer Allen Craft

To help Christians recognize and confess how sin distorts our relationship to place and hinders our ability to love our neighbors, and to help the church develop artistic practices of placemaking that advance the kingdom of God by promoting justice, beauty, and connection.

Teacher-Scholar
West Point, georgia
2024

Dallas International University (2023)

Beth Argot & Kayleen Bobbitt

To conduct fieldwork exploring the use of pilgrimage, movement, and the arts in worship as means of healing trauma and encouraging spiritual integration (knowing God with both our heads and our hearts).

Teacher-Scholar
Dallas, texas
2023

Calvin University

James K.A. Smith

To prepare an essay that explores how contemporary visual and literary art fosters contemplative habits, an inviting 'preamble' to spiritual contemplation involved in both personal and communal liturgical practices.

Teacher-Scholar
Grand Rapids, michigan
2022

Hope College

David Keep

To deepen worshipers' theology and spiritual life by creating an online Advent calendar that features visual art and music, and by holding art interpretation events and panel discussions in which participants engage theological truths—particularly the incarnation—through the arts.

Teacher-Scholar
Holland, michigan
2022

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS)

Rebecca Slough

To explore how the spatial and visual dimensions of congregational worship shape diverse Anabaptist communities, in order to create resources that facilitate culturally-informed reflection on visual arts in worship and to curate visual art resources for use in Anabaptist worship. 

Teacher-Scholar
Elkhart, indiana
2021

Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology

Sr. Jeana Visel

To support deeper study and experience of Byzantine iconography and theology by creating a moveable iconostasis that will aid the community's growth in knowledge and appreciation of the theology and spiritual practices of iconography and broaden its experience of Eastern expressions of worship.

Teacher-Scholar
St. Meinrad, indiana
2021