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 integrate offering of time, materials goods, services and money into liturgical practices so that worshipers better understand the processes by which we offer and receive gifts from God and from one another.
To equip children and youth for Christian worship within the liturgical framework of the Eucharist, and to foster intergenerational church community by fully engaging young people in a corporate worship experience through a newly commissioned Eucharistic liturgy for young voices and Orff instruments.
To connect a multicultural, multi-class group of children and youth with artists/mentors to learn about and practice various art forms including painting, puppetry/drama, photography, dance and music that will be used in worship.
To energize and enrich worship through the congregation-wide shared experience of planning, creating and evaluating relevant, service-specific visual art.
To study the Eucharist and its practice in the United Methodist church through a collaboration with six congregations, and to enrich existing Easter Vigil liturgies through the use of liturgical dance, storytelling, and the electronic media while encouraging other congregations to institute Vigils for the first time.
To offer a one-week Summer Institute on worship and the arts for clergy, laity and seminarians with the intent of exploring the intersections of arts and religion and how these intersections can renew worship.
To conduct two three-day leadership institutes focusing on the foundation, formula, form, fervency, and festivity of Christian worship.
To increase involvement and understanding of sermons by engaging youth, leaders and pastors in a process of preparation which will include discussion of the text, life applications and the creation of visual materials.
To encourage a wide variety of youth and adults who have gifts in music, technology, public speaking and hospitality to create ecumenical worship services which will be offered on Wednesday evenings for people in rural settings who often are unable to gather on Sundays for traditional worship.
To develop multigenerational worship services led by multicultural worship teams which focus on the community of faith and engages both children and adults through music from diverse cultures and weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
To train lay leaders in understanding and communicating Scripture through workshops in several churches, so that Scripture might be integrated into worship in meaningful ways.
To develop and nurture children as worship leaders in an urban multicultural congregation through a summer camp and after school program.
