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 embrace diverse practices from around the world that give worshipers experiences of acting as host and as guest, in order to strengthen and broaden their understanding of biblical, cross-cultural, transcultural, and reciprocal hospitality.
To explore artistry in the Bible and in Christian tradition in order to help worshipers experience art as worship and to give them opportunities to create visual art that invites worshipers into the Biblical story.
Sr. Jeana Visel
To support deeper study and experience of Byzantine iconography and theology by creating a moveable iconostasis that will aid the community's growth in knowledge and appreciation of the theology and spiritual practices of iconography and broaden its experience of Eastern expressions of worship.
To foster connection among the members of a multi-site church by participating together in common at-home worship practices, a sermon series delivered by pastors from throughout the multi-site church, and Benedictine prayer practices.
To discover and express fresh dimensions of God by equipping worshipers to give testimony to experiences of God at work through personal storytelling and visual art.
To study, develop, and implement liturgical practices that equip worshipers for mission, and to discover gifts in the community that can be assets to the church's worship.
To deepen worshipers' experience of the Eucharist by learning together, sharing testimonies, varying practices, and living into the connection of the Eucharist to mission.
To cultivate a common worship language and shared understanding of worship that facilitates a sense of community across generation and technology, and to use that language to connect worship with all of life.
To explore the parables of Jesus in the Gullah translation of the Bible using four art forms, in order to enhance the discipleship, prayer and worship of four congregations.
To pilgrimage together through the Christian Year as spiritual formation in order to more deeply experience Christ, the church, spiritual practices, and the community.
Carla Pezzia and Theodore James Whapham
To survey clergy and congregants regarding the state of homiletics in the Catholic church in order to support Catholic preachers in improving their homilies and leverage liturgical preaching to reconnect with disengaged congregants.
Paul Heintzman
To investigate how Christian worship and leisure influence each other in order to better understand the relationship between them, so that Christian worship may be enhanced, and the leisure of Christians can also be enriched.
