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
Matthew Kaemingk
Matthew Kaemingk
To create a handbook that will provide leaders with a host of songs, prayers, blessings, sample worship services, sermon topics, and guides for small-group discussion to equip pastors and worship leaders with practical ideas, advice, and resources to lead effective worship for workers.
Kuyper College
Richelle White
Richelle White
To create a storytelling lab for an intergenerational group of women to create spoken-word and written testimonies about healing and community building that will serve as liturgies in corporate worship and as a curriculum resource.
Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Katie Graber
Katie Graber
To help communities critically engage questions about why we sing diverse music and how we can do it justly by collaboratively creating a hymnal companion-style volume that aids North American communities as they sing songs from around the world.
École de Théologie Évangélique du Québec
Ruth Elaine Labeth
Ruth Elaine Labeth
To study the composition of scripture-based songs in Creole churches in Guadeloupe to help worship leaders and pastors envision culturally contextualized worship.
Villanova University
Wonchul Shin
Wonchul Shin
To provide Asian and Asian-American worshiping communities with rich Pan-Asian theological resources for their public worship practice as a form of public witness that will proclaim the dignity of the Asian and Asian-American community and transform the culture of anti-Asian violence and racism.
College of St. Scholastica
Elizabeth Anderson
Elizabeth Anderson
To survey the process of revising the calendar of commemorations in the Episcopal Church since 2003 and to offer a proposal for how calendar reform might proceed amidst a diversity of theological understandings and liturgical practices.
Western Theological Seminary
Ronald Rienstra
Ronald Rienstra
To write a book comprised of brief essays that explore the deep patterns in worship as well as in worship's constituent parts (ordo, scripture, sermon, song, prayer, action).
Pennsylvania State University
AnneMarie Mingo
AnneMarie Mingo
To involve women of color in the development of models and resources for connecting worship and public social witness.
Union Presbyterian Seminary
Paul Galbreath
Paul Galbreath
To develop liturgical resources for congregational use that link Christian discipleship and earth care, grounding environmental advocacy in corporate worship practices.
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
Robert Pendergraft
Robert Pendergraft
To curate a sourcebook of materials for use in the local church with the specific aim of strengthening intergenerational participation in worship.