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 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 deepen scriptural reflection and to connect with the community by creating films for use in public worship that feature creative storytelling and dialogue on contemporary issues.
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.
To develop innovative worship experiences and intergenerational community prayer programs, primarily focusing on children and adolescents’ formation in worship and the arts.
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.
Jeffrey Allen Murdock
To encourage more inclusive and vibrant worship experiences for Christian communities by developing resources for Black sacred music programs about the historical and cultural influences on the genre, then equipping sacred music scholars and practitioners to diversify worship music selections, educate congregations, and perform Black sacred music in a variety of contexts.
Jonathan J. Hehn
To foster appreciation for the worship practices of Presbyterian and Reformed Christians around the world through an anthropological study of Korean and Taiwanese Presbyterian liturgical practices and the dynamic exchange between those church communities and their North American siblings.
J. J. Wright
To create and workshop an original musico-dramatic composition and production of five scenes from resurrection accounts to enable undergraduate students in the Folk Choir to contemplate healing and forgiveness.
To promote multigenerational collaboration and address a development gap for young worship leaders by developing a worship leadership training program.
