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.
Covenant Life Church
To create a series of worship services through dialogue with the Lenten planning team and an ecumenical/ interfaith clergy gathering for the season of Lent in order to develop worship habits through visual arts, dramas, sermons, printed home study materials, and a community blog.
Crossroads Community Church
To develop a five-part series on worship basics that is accompanied by small group discussion guides, children and youth curriculum, web resources, visual arts and drama.
Daybreak Community Church
To create a worship series on praise, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication that explores what each means, how to incorporate each into corporate worship, and how to develop each outside of corporate worship as regular parts of life through the use of video art, drama, messages, testimonies, music, visual arts, journals, and email.
Drayton CRC
To incorporate people of all ages and skills in planning and implementing a series on developing worship habits in daily life with particular attention to visual arts, children’s messages, family activities, and sign language to communicate these ideas through kinetic involvement.
Midland Park CRC
To explore how particular aspects of liturgy and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper connect with seasons of the church year through a series of worship services that condenses the entire church calendar into an eight week series with the Lord’s Supper celebrated each week to emphasize the various themes with special attention given to the involvement of children through leadership, visual arts, and dance.
Monroe Community Church
To teach people how to incorporate moments of adoration, confession, intercession, and listening into daily life through worship services that explore both Jesus’ words and examples of each habit and the words and emotions of each habit in the Psalms. Additionally, an intergenerational weekend retreat will be offered where small groups will develop scripture, a hands-on experience and a take-home card to emphasize the practice of the habit.
New City Church
To create a small group curriculum that includes Friday evening services to introduce urban teens to life in Christ and give them a set of daily practices that build their relationships with Christ.
New Life CRC
To teach a six-week series that includes dramatic readings, PowerPoint presentations, video productions, and weekly email devotions to lead worshipers through the Lenten season by showing how the development of daily vertical habits illuminate our walk to the cross and the empty tomb.
River City Christian Reformed Church
To gather a team from each of the ministry areas of the church to plan worship services and create take-home sheets to encourage worshipers to make Vertical Habits a part of their living in a practical and tangible way.
Sojourn Community Church
To encounter and practice Vertical Habits as a significant part of spiritual formation through an interactive art exhibit, a month-long devotional written by church leaders and a lecture series taught by pastors from the church or local community.
St Luke's Lutheran Church
To develop a six-week series on understanding and applying liturgical practices in daily life that will include orders of worship focusing on each practice, a sermon series, and weekly family activity booklets.
St. Thomas Episcopal Church
To develop resources for the four parts of the Episcopal Eucharist service, four activity sessions for young people and a Vacation Bible School program for ages 6 through 12 around the Vertical Habits themes, focusing on how these themes are aspects of a healthy relationship with God.