1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2025 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 promote the inclusion of minority worship leaders in chapel services through inviting diverse guest leaders and emphasizing the theological potential of minoritized worship expressions in seminary courses and in a colloquium.
To develop contextualized liturgies for life in the climate crisis through a collaborative learning community and video creation.
To train young worship leaders and strengthen congregational worship through developing an intergenerational mentorship program.
To strengthen intergenerational worship through the implementation of distinct learning opportunities designed for different groups gathered around age, gender, and church ministry.
Emmanuel Parish
To train worship leaders in the theology and practice of intergenerational and innovative worship (including African music and liturgy, dance, and visual arts) through developing opportunities for education, prayer, and collaborative planning of major festival services.
To support pastoral enrichment for second-generation Korean American pastors through piloting a cohort program that incorporates contextual formation, spiritual direction, pastoral rejuvenation, and funding for liturgical experimentation by cohort members.
To become a more hospitable and anti-racist church through training and reflection to deconstruct white-centered worship norms and by expanding the multiplicity of non-Eurocentric ways that we engage in worship.
To equip emerging BIPOC worship artist activists to shape their local ministries to develop a prophetic imagination that celebrates the goodness and beauty of the justice God seeks for our world.
To integrate intergenerational relationships, imagination, and playfulness into worship life to promote faith formation that begins in and transcends the rituals of worship.
To intentionally engage the views of the full range of our racially and economically diverse congregation about the meaning and purpose of worship and to integrate their ideas, gifts, and perspectives into worship practices that feel authentic and hospitable to all.
To encourage and equip choir members as worship leaders, not performers, by creating a network for choirs in Vancouver’s Chinese churches that will commission hymn anthems, share resources, and prepare choir members to strengthen the corporate ministry of congregational singing.
To create a worship learning and vision group that will develop its theological understanding of worship and collaboratively imagine and implement new, culturally inclusive worship elements.
