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 explore with young children how artistic response gives language to their understanding of God through mentoring and communication with staff and parents to more deeply engage them in worship in school and in their congregations.
To explore the Psalms with children, youth and families through art, music and memorizing Scripture to shape a posture of hope and give words to express doubts, questions and fears.
To offer a series of intergenerational workshops, book studies and conversations with other churches that will help implement multisensory worship services interwoven with new sermon-based small groups to help the congregation better understand, retain, and apply God's truth to their lives.
To develop assessment and formation tools for worship by engaging in meaningful reflection and collaboration with seven congregations that will create a pattern of continual reflection, assessment, engagement, discussion and practice regarding music for church members and leaders.
To create on-campus initiatives that will connect academic life with campus worship by creating a university-wide theme of prayerfulness and to form a Spiritual Formation cohort of professors to intentionally link campus worship practices with the classroom, introduce spiritual practices in the classroom and explore the relationship between spiritual practice and pedagogy.
To equip five congregations in different regions and settings to use liturgies based on those used during the Protestant Reformation and to demonstrate how they may be used in congregational life today.
To engage the congregation and community in a study of the Old Testament story of Noah and to create art that will deepen relationships and tell the story in ways that will connect Sunday worship and daily life.
To immerse the congregation in activities that will encourage worshipers to pray and reflect on the effects of prayer through the Psalms, prayers for healing, drumming circles, embodied prayer and to use the written prayers of the community in worship.
To teach the congregation global, bilingual songs using the Vertical Habits of worship that will develop a pattern of intergenerational and multicultural worship and reflect the diversity of the congregation and the community.
To engage in a study of the relationship of liturgy, music, and space that will encourage worshipers to consider the biblical and theological rationale behind elements of worship and worship space and create a more God-honoring and formative worship environment in a culturally and generationally diverse congregation.
To offer workshops and learning opportunities for local congregations who seek to explore insights and practices such as contemplative prayer, meditation, simplicity and silence (re)discovered by the emerging church movement.
To study liturgy past and present that will lead to more deliberate worship planning resulting in a new understanding of God's character, nature and work in a young and growing congregation which meets in two locations.
