1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 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 cultivate congregational commitments to justice and diversity by training worship leaders to incorporate music from various cultural traditions, commissioning new works, and collaborating with neighboring arts organizations.
To unite existing Korean-, English-, and Chinese-speaking Christian communities in worship by training leaders for new multilingual chapel services featuring rotating language leadership and real-time translation.
Clair Mesick
To study New Testament texts on despair, suicide, and mental disorder (“madness”) in their historical and cultural contexts and to consult with experts in pastoral care and psychology to consider implications for the contemporary church context and to provide resources for preaching on these topics that do not demonize mental illness.
Forrest Wakeman
To encourage deeper appreciation of God’s redemptive pursuit of God’s people through preparing for (including learning the music and studying the text) a premier performance of a large-scale choral and orchestral work that sets Old Testament texts by the biblical prophets as a dialogue between God and God’s people.
Debra Rienstra
To offer theological reflection and pathways of response about climate change to Christian communities in their worship, preaching, sacraments, Sabbath-keeping, faith formation, and community action.
To promote reconciliation between Indigenous and settler Christians by co-creating worship songs through an ethical cross-cultural collaboration.
To connect generations and strengthen community by launching a community choir that will integrate spiritual formation with musical practice.
To provide spiritual formation to online and in-person congregations through posting teachings on prayer, sabbath, generosity, service, and solitude in the church’s app.
To live into a theology of singing as sacramental presence by reflecting on the history of communal singing, practicing embodied and paperless singing, developing new song leaders, and composing new songs.
Edward Foley
To empower preachers to effectively engage with science in their sermons and homilies through a training program and the creation of digital resources.
To deepen biblical and theological understanding of preaching and empower emerging leaders by developing a participatory model of sermon creation and presentation that intentionally involves youth worship leaders.
To cultivate a spiritually healthy, emotionally resilient, and missionally engaged congregation by forming disciples through contextual preaching, participatory music, liturgical art, and personal devotion practices.
