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 train the worship team on the theology of worship and on practical musical and vocal abilities.
To cultivate a youth worship culture that deepens their experiences of God, promotes a greater sense of belonging, and strengthens relationships among our youth.
To cultivate an appreciation of the liturgical year and the meaning of specific acts of worship in order to facilitate creative participation and planning, and to welcome people of all ages into all aspects of gathered worship.
To develop a vibrant, meaningful, an.d formative worship program for daily chapel in order to develop a shared communal identity in Christ which is rooted in the University’s acapella Church of Christ heritage and is also hospitable to all worshipers
To center worship in the seminary’s curriculum by fostering symbiotic exchange between the worship program and other departments, with emphasis on worship as a central place of formation for the whole community.
Robert Neil Cooke
To develop a theology of technology and social media that leads to the development of liturgical skills in the local church context and of ways to utilize technology and social media to strengthen the public activities of the church.
To investigate how the legacy of white supremacy affects worship practices, to learn to better appreciate and include worship materials from other cultures without appropriating, and to learn how anti-racist practices are implemented by other churches leading the way in these efforts.
To promote genuine grace-filled hospitality in worship through a more racially, culturally, and intergenerationally sensitive worship experience that is sustained and perpetuated through a message of love, adaptability, and social engagement during the worship experience.
Emily Andrews and Will Kynes
To learn from and with an ecumenical group of churches unfamiliar with the practice of corporate lament to gather the most important questions and pastoral concerns related to practicing corporate lament, and to develop practices for retrieving and employing lament in worship.
To promote unity and diversity in local Seventh Day Baptist congregations by gathering worship leaders to discern the transcultural, contextual, cross-cultural, and counter-culture nature of worship as they worship together in diverse ways.
To create a unique opportunity for worshipers to recognize the beauty, majesty, mystery, and holiness of God by developing a dedicated worship space in a barn, and facilitating worship experiences that foster a sense of holy vocation with and among all of God's creation as participants, rather than observers.
Andrew Summerson
To bring together an ecumenical group of scholars to critically analyze early Christian liturgical poetry as prayer and pedagogy in order to give exposure to a significant and underdeveloped voice in contemporary Christianity.
