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.

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Teacher-Scholar Missional

Ambrose University

Arch Chee Keen Wong

To identify worship practices that nourish the liturgical life of church plants in a specifically Canadian urban context by conducting a comparative qualitative analysis of how missiology shapes the philosophy and practice of worship in three congregations.

Teacher-Scholar
Calgary, alberta
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Preaching

Baylor University

Tyshawn Gardner

To equip congregations from any tradition or ethnic demographic to impact their communities through their spiritual and social witness by lifting up hermeneutical and homiletical insights from the African American preaching tradition.

Teacher-Scholar
Waco, texas
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Preaching

Calvin University

Tyler Greenway

To equip preachers to intentionally design sermons that form congreganats by investigating how preaching shapes Christian formation through a multi-method empirical study informed by the disciplines of both psychology and theology.

Teacher-Scholar
Grand Rapids, michigan
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Collaboration Liturgy

Catholic Theological Union

Anne McGowan

To explore how a collaborative, listening-based approach to Catholic liturgical development might deepen the prayer of the faithful by hosting synodal discernment events about a new Feast of Creation in Christ, training discussion leaders, and collecting and analyzing data from these events.

Teacher-Scholar
Chicago, illinois
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Trauma/Mental Health

Dominican House of Studies

Dominic Langevin

To free young Christians from scrupulosity and obsessive feelings of doubt and guilt in worship by creating resources that draw on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas in dialogue with contemporary psychology.

Teacher-Scholar
Washington, district of columbia
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Technology Visual Arts

Emory University

Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones

To help congregations consider how artificial intelligence and digitally mediated visual culture are reshaping Christian practices of seeing, attention, and theological imagination in public worship through curated conversations, theological research, and development of a preaching guide and liturgical resources.

Teacher-Scholar
Atlanta, georgia
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Missional

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Edwin Chr. van Driel

To study the possibility of offering services of Choral Evensong as a missional outreach for churches in post-Christian contexts in the United States based on ethnographic and appreciative inquiry research regarding comparable initiatives in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Teacher-Scholar
Pittsburgh, pennsylvania
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Visual Arts

Providence College

Arthur Urbano

To create a visual companion to the Revised Common Lectionary based on the disciplines of art history and theology in the early church that will lead readers on a journey of prayer as they encounter scripture paired with images and meditations.

Teacher-Scholar
Providence, rhode island
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Preaching

Vanderbilt University

Eunjoo Kim

To develop a model for preaching in postmodern, postcolonial, and post-Christian contexts that will serve Christian worshiping communities by integrating psychological hermeneutics, cultural and cognitive psychology, and a theology of friendship.

Teacher-Scholar
Nashville, tennessee
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Liturgy

Villanova University

Timothy Brunk

To promote the celebration of and reflection on the newly established Feast of Creation of Christ across ecclesial traditions by producing new liturgical resources for use in diverse churches across North America that will inspire worshiping communities to reconnect with the Creator and care for the sacred gift of creation.

Teacher-Scholar
Villanova, pennsylvania
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Liturgy Trauma/Mental Health

Wartburg Theological Seminary

Jan Schnell

To examine how worship practices can hurt or exclude people at the margins, to analyze this research informed by trauma studies and liturgical theology, and to create pedagogical tools and liturgical resources that promote worship in which God’s welcome becomes lived experience.

Teacher-Scholar
Dubuque, iowa
2026
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Teacher-Scholar Youth

Abilene Christian University

Jennifer Schroeder

To equip ministry leaders and parents with tools to create sustainable, inclusive worship practices that value children’s voices in singing, praying, preaching, scripture reading, and communion by exploring their participation with members of ministry leadership teams, both in and outside of children’s ministry.

Teacher-Scholar
Abilene, texas
2025
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