1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
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.
To deepen worshipers’ practice of joy in a community marked by suffering by creating Psalm-influenced liturgical art together.
To strengthen the role of testimony in worship by helping worshipers tell their stories through visual art, original song, and written narrative.
To teach worshipers to engage art as an act of worship and to engage in Christian art-making, in order to better participate in the liturgy with body, mind, and soul.
To increase worshipers’ experience of the beauty of God by equipping churches with tools and with skilled leaders that will continue the rich tradition of chant, iconography, woodworking, and textiles in Orthodox worship.
To fully integrate the arts in the worship life of the church through collaboration among liturgists, musicians, and visual artists, in order to express and embody the attributes of God and the identity of worshipers’ as God’s beloved people.
To strengthen worshipers’ connection with God and with one another by integrating multisensory creative arts in worship
To enrich worship by exploring the ways that music, dance, and visual arts support both formative and expressive aspects of gathered worship.
To deepen the prayer and worship of a campus community by engaging art in community worship spaces and by creating new art together as a devotional practice.
To promote the role of visual art in the liturgy as a means of meeting God in worship, led by a community of worship artists.
To cultivate in children an awareness of the beauty of God in worship while teaching them skills for leading worship through music, dance, and visual arts.
To facilitate relationships between Anglo- and African-American churches by fully engaging in one another’s worship experiences and by creating liturgical art together.
To expand and strengthen the communal nature of campus worship by exploring the relationship between liturgy and spiritual disciplines and by engaging visual art as a form of intercessory prayer.
