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 help participants deepen their experience of God by developing inclusive and artistic worship practices that blend traditional and contemporary elements of worship and cultivate spaces that are welcoming, accessible, and reflective of diverse spiritual needs.
To pursue justice by enabling worship artists from the United States and Palestine to create rich liturgies and songs that reflect the lived realities of Palestinian Christians.
To strengthen worship leadership by implementing a leadership development project consisting of workshops, mentoring, and worship celebrations.
J. J. Wright
To learn how a musical dramatic proclamation of Christ’s Passion and resurrection awakens friendship, hope, and missionary imagination, and to translate lessons learned into pastoral habits that strengthen Christian worshiping communities.
Jennifer Powell McNutt
To study the history of the French Huguenot Bible as an avenue for equipping the church with a fresh appreciation for the nature of scripture, its role in worship, and how scripture points to the living God and transforms the Christian life today.
To strengthen worship life by exploring how diverse worship traditions shape communion with God through Christ across cultures using the primary expressions of art and music.
To invite all ages into creative, participatory worship by facilitating experiential worship opportunities with a worship lab and a collective art project.
To support worshipers with mental health challenges by promoting mental health awareness, training congregants to offer peer support, and encouraging mental well-being through music ministry.
To create new baptismal resources that educate and encourage new believers in ways that respond to the needs of diverse twenty-first-century Christian families.
Amy Davis Abdallah
To explore how Christians think about, experience, and mark death, both physical and metaphorical, in order to help Christians acknowledge death more meaningfully in their personal, small-group, and corporate worship.
To foster a dynamic, participatory, and creative worship community where young adults can engage with God through visual arts, music, and worship leadership training.
To reimagine the practice of the Lord’s Supper—including designing table installations, creating contextualized liturgies, and hosting culturally specific "love feasts"—to represent the diversity of Christ's body and enrich the spirit of celebration surrounding communion.
