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.
Dordt University
Kyle Dieleman
Kyle Dieleman
To encourage preachers through exploration fo historical and contemporary Advent preaching to consider how preaching can form people for a life in which pacing, expectations, and longings are recast in light of the kingdom of God.
Duke University
Lester Ruth
Lester Ruth
To produce an anthology of curated primary sources to provide easier access to key documents related to the historical development of contemporary praise and worship music.
Emmanuel College
HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Mona Tokarek LaFosse
HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Mona Tokarek LaFosse
To train international graduate students experiencing the trauma of migration and immigration in practices of trauma-informed worship leading so they can implement the practices in their worshiping communities.
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.
Fuller Theological Seminary
Jennifer Ackerman
Jennifer Ackerman
To study the impact arts-based training encouraging curiosity, creativity, and courage has on pastoral leadership to increase pastors' capacity to lead vibrant, justice-oriented communities of worship.
Howard University School of Divinity
Harold Dean Trulear
Harold Dean Trulear
To explore and disseminate best practices for shaping and sustaining a Christian social justice witness through corporate worship.
Knox College (2024)
Sarah Travis
Sarah Travis
To support lay and experienced or retired preachers by developing a pedagogy that prioritizes mutual conversation and consideration of context and social location.
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.
Outreach Canada Ministry
Barry Whatley
Barry Whatley
To explore the vital role of poetic imagination and creative expression of poetry in enhancing spiritual formation and worship in the local church.
Point University
Jennifer Allen Craft
Jennifer Allen Craft
To help Christians recognize and confess how sin distorts our relationship to place and hinders our ability to love our neighbors, and to help the church develop artistic practices of placemaking that advance the kingdom of God by promoting justice, beauty, and connection.
Providence Theological Seminary
Robert Dean
Robert Dean
To resituate homiletics within a Christological and robustly trinitarian framework by examining prominent assumptions governing preaching today, in order to revitalize North American preaching for the sake of the formation of worshiping communities.
Rollins College
Harold Dorrell Briscoe
Harold Dorrell Briscoe
To research the historical and sociopolitical significance of Negro spirituals in movements of liberation, and to demonstrate through workshops, concerts, and an immersive learning trip how these spirituals can enrich modern Christian worship practices.