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.
La Fuente Ministries
To empower and train church members to create and record bilingual songs and liturgical resources for Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost.
Life Pacific University
Steven Felix-Jager
Steven Felix-Jager
To support church practitioners in their aesthetic, pastoral, and theological deliberations about congregational worship music by addressing multiple modes of discernment, with the goal of leading to deeper, more empathetic understanding of worship traditions.
Loyola Marymount University
Layla A. Karst
Layla A. Karst
To explore the pastoral and theological implications of online pandemic Liturgies of the Word, focusing especially on the translation of ritual practices between off-line and online worship and on emerging understandings of ecclesial leadership and authority.
Made to Flourish
To help church leaders learn how to develop worship, discipleship, and missional practices that connect with congregants’ Monday-through-Saturday lives through skill mapping, a cohort program, and a three-day intensive.
Mission United Presbyterian Church
To equip a new generation of worship leaders with musical skills and vocal techniques to foster the creation of worship experiences that connect with and reach out to people from the surrounding community.
Modus Church
To develop more contextualized public worship services through equipping musicians and lay preachers with resources and skills shaped by the experience of the immigrant church.
New Bethel AME
To engage youth and young adults by remembering and retelling stories of the Black church through development of a lectionary, worship guide, and Sunday School curriculum emphasizing the seven principles of Kwanzaa.
North Hills Hispanic Mission UMC
To create a worship team and provide the group with initial formative training on musical skills and biblical-theological foundations.
Nueva Esperanza Covenant Church
To create a youth choir and train choir members and worship leaders on vocal techniques.
Providence College
Daria Spezzano
Daria Spezzano
To draw on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas to provide tools for disaffiliated Catholic college students to engage the goodness, truth, and beauty of God in worship as a response to their search for meaning.
Pueblo de Dios Lutheran Church
To create and implement a model of bilingual worship that will foster church unity among worshipers from different generations.
Restauración Los Ángeles
To develop a new generation of church musicians and worship leaders who, in addition to typical roles, could acquire skills required to compose new congregational songs and to produce new worship music.