1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 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 involve the children’s ministry and the youth ministry in public worship.
Melanie Ross
To research the worship music industry, Christian higher education, and congregational ministry, in order to explore the intersection of liturgy and economics, to provide a history of how worship became part of the commercial music and entertainment industry, and to understand the ways that congregations and Christian colleges that train future worship leaders have responded to this shift.
To enrich worship by engaging the arts in order to promote healing and understanding in the midst of social injustices.
Rebecca Slough
To explore how the spatial and visual dimensions of congregational worship shape diverse Anabaptist communities, in order to create resources that facilitate culturally-informed reflection on visual arts in worship and to curate visual art resources for use in Anabaptist worship.
To promote and teach social justice-centered worship through proclamation, practice, and protest.
Antonio Alonso
To tell the story of the theological significance of ordinary material objects and the theological convictions they express, in order to encourage deeper attentiveness to the diverse materials through which we worship God.
To curate art and liturgy into an experience of Stations of the Resurrection that will promote a deeper engagement with the season of Eastertide and the grace of Christ's resurrection.
To engage in hymn singing in worship that facilitates the participation of worshipers of multiple abilities, generations, and languages.
To engage in biblical and theological reflection, practical training, and collaboration to initiate chapel worship that promotes individual and collective formation of students around the core values of the institution.
Beth Argot
To study the relationship between historical worship practices and arts and trauma healing practices in order to explore the potential for healing and increased wellbeing of worshipers within the context of public worship.
Jeremy Perigo
To investigate emerging issues in liturgical theology through podcast and video interviews with scholars and practitioners, in order to empower local ministry leaders and churches to discern theologically and imagine liturgically the characteristics of Christian worship in their own context.
John Ruth
To survey the present state of college and seminary instruction on the theology, history, and practice of contemporary praise and worship, and to engage scholars in conversation around recent and emerging scholarship on contemporary worship in order to create a podcast series and a curriculum guide for worship educators and church practitioners.
