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 deepen young people’s engagement with Scripture, with one another, and with their community by training them to lead worship through dance, music, and mime, using the Psalms as a model.
To develop intentional worship models for military congregations that remove barriers to those who are experiencing PTSD and to facilitate connection through prayer.
Ed Willmington
To research six vocational competencies of well-formed worship leaders and develop a variety of resources to share insights related to the formation of worship leaders.
To unite two congregations in mutual partnership by facilitating full engagement in music, arts, and sacraments through bilingual worship.
To promote a vibrant experience of the Lord’s Supper in which worshipers experience God’s nourishing presence by engaging in new forms of communion liturgies.
To promote the role of visual and performing arts in the liturgy as a means of meeting God in worship, by providing opportunities for artists to lead the congregation.
To create a welcoming, multi-racial worship experience that explores God's liberation and justice through singing gospel music.
To help worshipers live into the salvation story in the liturgical year by participating in collaborative art-making that will be incorporated into corporate worship.
To draw mutually enriching connections between worship and social justice by crafting worship elements that flow out of and deepen worshipers’ participation in justice ministries.
Lisa Milligan Long
To survey worshipers' understanding of the effect of participation in the Lord's Supper, and to offer methods to leaders in a variety of denominational settings for deepening Eucharistic participation.
To break down barriers of age, ethnicity, and worship tradition by engaging and theologically reflecting on the arts, theater, and music in worship.
To explore the history of liturgical practices in the church's worship in order to be formed by those practices and to authentically integrate them into the church's worship life.
