Current and Past Grants

Story Dwelling

To provide access to worship for busy families through two relationally focused worship spaces—home worship and outdoor dinner church—by equipping lay leaders, designing curriculum, and facilitating experimentation with worship practices in these contexts.

Tabernacle of Life Christian Church

To foster a deeper understanding of and practice of prayer within the congregation by training leaders and developing new prayer practices for personal and communal worship that are rooted in consistent, transformational, mission-centered prayer.

The Anointed Church of Jesus Christ

To deepen engagement with sScripture across generations by integrating sermon preparation and reflection with at-home worship, training multiple ages in scripture proclamation, and strengthening the theological foundations for worship and congregational gathering practices.

The BioLogos Foundation, Inc.

To form communities whose prayers, lament, and sending are shaped by faithful attention to God’s world by commissioning pastoral and lay leadership from two congregations to participate in the Christian Climate Observers Program and to receive those experiences back into the worshiping life of their churches.

The Church on the Way

To facilitate deeper participation in worship by creating bilingual worship music rooted in scripture and by training worshipers to foster formation and participation through worship that will impact the church and the broader community.

The Dwelling

To promote full and equitable participation, deepen practices of praise, and cultivate worship leadership among people with lived experiences of homelessness by establishing a community-led choir and dance ministry.

The Orthodox Christian Academy of Atlanta

To gather practitioners of Orthodox vigils to participate in a nine-hour vigil chanted by pan-Orthodox Byzantine choirs, share and hear research papers on Orthodox worship, and receive the relics of St. John so that these practitioners can strengthen the Orthodox tradition of vigils in their home communities.

The Presbyterian College

To integrate worship with academic studies and vocational formation by centering students in worship that roots them in God and orients them to love others and the world as a foundation for integrating faith and vocation.

Trinity United Church of Christ

To deepen worship participation and foster a sense of belonging by engaging in the communal creation of a mosaic quilt for the worship space while participating in guided story circles that bring the lived experience and spiritual life of the community into the creation process.

UR Restored Ministries, Inc.

To enrich ministries across the church by integrating practices of preaching, testimony, and prayer into weekly Bible studies, outreach ministries, and worshipers’ daily lives, leading to restoration and spiritual growth for those navigating reentry and life transition.

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.

Village Chapel Presbyterian Church

To expand and enrich worshipers’ understanding of scripture and the elements of Reformed worship by immersing worshipers in scripture, broadening understanding of the power of poetry and music in worship, and partnering with neighbors and scholars to engage biblical history, story, and genre.