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.
The Luke Church
To facilitate discipleship by deeply engaging the stories of Advent and Easter through multiple disciplines, including theology, personality, technology, and worship arts.
Anabaptist Worship Network
To gather songwriters, poets, and artists to produce songs, prayers, art pieces, and videos that will resource and inspire under-resourced Anabaptist communities across North America.
City Chapel (2022)
To engage the beauty of art in worship in order to awaken our understanding and imagination of what it means to care for God’s created world.
First Presbyterian Church of Holt
To invite worshipers into reflection on traditions of liturgical art that facilitates engagement with wonder and the beauty of God, culminating in the collaborative creation of paraments for the worship space.
Holy Cross Lutheran Church (2022)
To deepen, enrich, and connect the individual and corporate worship life of congregants by drawing on the devotional practices of the saints throughout history in aesthetically rich and cohesive worship experiences that have corresponding practices which engage the senses and foster embodied devotional practices at home.
United Presbyterian Church of Walton
To foster ecumenical connections among twelve churches by participating in the creation of pottery to form the faith of worshipers as the theological imagery of God as the potter whose hands continue to mold and reform is carried into the worship of each church and into ecumenical worship gatherings.
Allen Chapel AME Church (2021)
To enrich worship by engaging the arts in order to promote healing and understanding in the midst of social injustices.
Cardiphonia, a department of Artists in Christian Testimony Intl.
To curate art and liturgy into an experience of Stations of the Resurrection that will promote a deeper engagement with the season of Eastertide and the grace of Christ's resurrection.
Fuller Seminary/Brehm Center
Maria Eugenia Fee
Maria Eugenia Fee
To establish and facilitate a series of arts-based leadership development workshops for pastors and church leaders in order to introduce them to the formational value of the arts in worship and invigorate arts-based worship practices in their faith communities.
Red Mountain Community Church
To explore artistry in the Bible and in Christian tradition in order to help worshipers experience art as worship and to give them opportunities to create visual art that invites worshipers into the Biblical story.
Sidebar Stories (2021)
To discover and express fresh dimensions of God by equipping worshipers to give testimony to experiences of God at work through personal storytelling and visual art.
The Historic Penn Center
To explore the parables of Jesus in the Gullah translation of the Bible using four art forms, in order to enhance the discipleship, prayer and worship of four congregations.