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 help churches and artists learn to collaborate with each other more effectively through an artist-in-residence program that will help worshipers connect more deeply with God, scripture, and one another through the arts.
Sarah Kathleen Johnson
To facilitate healing and ethical responses to public crises by studying the unintended consequences of ritual responses to mass shootings, the enduring legacy of colonialism, and climate disasters.
To increase ecological-biblical literacy in outdoor worship participants and their communities and to encourage lectionary-focused eco-preaching through nature-based outdoor scripture study.
Amanda Howard
To identify challenges faced by individuals with sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) during worship services, to investigate strategies for self-regulation, and to evaluate support programs offered by worshiping communities, in order to create a resource guide for worshiping communities to better include people with SPS during religious services.
To encourage faculty to explore their vocation and calling as an act of worship and to share their stories in worship, podcasts, and other contexts to help both faculty and students grow in their walks with God and identify God’s work in their vocational journeys.
Jonathan Rodgers
To examine post-COVID worship in the Southern Baptist Church through interviews and surveys to gain an understanding of how worship has been and is being reconfigured.
Nelson Cowan
To equip churches to better understand youths’ motivations for participation in worship by conducting a qualitative study of their attitudes toward diverse liturgical forms, their responses to liturgical change, and their participation in public Christian worship.
To engage with science in worship by piloting worship "experiments" in five partner churches involving interviews with worship leaders and scientists and the creation of new worship resources.
Mischa Willett
To foster greater appreciation for the diverse ways Christianity has shaped human creativity and to explore ways in which Christian literary genres have influenced the spiritual lives of Christian communities through an analysis of hymnody, devotionals, spiritual autobiography, sermons, allegory, and more.
Matthew Sigler
To chronicle the history of the Charismatic Renewal movement in the Pacific Northwest by gathering stories from living witnesses, digitizing primary sources, and writing a monograph.
To enlarge worshipers’ understanding of living a sacramental life to include praying through acts of earth care and environmental justice, through crafting creation-focused liturgies, hosting guest speakers, and encouraging environmentally ethical living.
To create a more welcoming, flexible, and inclusive worship space that promotes community-led worship practices through education about theologically sensitive, contextually appropriate, and aesthetically fitting church architecture.
