1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 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 host an ecumenical workshop series for rural churches in southwestern Ontario to acknowledge the unique challenges of rural communities, embrace a theology of abundance in naming the benefits of rural churches, and encourage one another.
To enhance and build upon the nontraditional Jazz Vespers service to offer innovative and radical welcome for in-person and virtual attendees to experience healing and hope.
To equip and encourage Asian American women in ministry by hosting a worship conference specifically geared toward equipping Asian American women and by leading two online cohorts to sustain them in ministry.
To help young adults and converts more deeply engage the Orthodox tradition of worship by establishing a training program in chant, iconography, and other liturgical arts.
Roland De Vries
To develop a seminary course and book chapter on interculturality in homiletics to equip preachers and emerging preachers to address the increasingly intercultural nature of their communities.
Joel Kiekintveld
To conduct a case study of how a church reimagined its worship model from attraction-based to member-led, in order to address the crisis of decline of church members and clergy by proposing a model of church rooted in the priesthood of believers.
To cultivate and nurture intergenerational discipleship through creative arts and songwriting workshops that will result in artwork in the sanctuary and original songs that tell the redemptive story from Genesis to Revelation.
To develop a worship community resource and learning platform with theologically sound, justice-rooted resources for congregational singing, bolstered by in-person learning events and educational video projects connecting congregational song to strong discipleship.
To deepen worshipers’ understanding of being a baptismal community by creating liturgical resources in celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the Anabaptist tradition.
To create liturgical resources for a multicultural, multilingual, and multigenerational congregation so this Asian-Canadian congregation can encounter the triune God through words and music.
To support Black Christian women’s holistic worship by deepening the connection between doxology, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy through a conference for worship and an accompanying mentorship cohort.
Courtney O’Grady
To invite Catholic school practitioners (PK–12) to engage in self-study and group discussion as a means of reckoning with racism, ableism, and other injustices in American Catholic school practices, and then to reimagine Catholic schools as inclusive and justice-oriented worshiping communities.
