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 offer worship services and discussion of scripture led by clergy, congregation members and seminary students for homeless men and women, many of whom have substance abuse problems or are chronically mentally ill.
To train youth and children in planning, leading, and facilitating intergenerational worship services that integrate art, dance, drama, scripture, story, and song.
To train congregants to tell both the biblical stories and their own faith story in fresh and lively ways through drama, images, movement, and storytelling in corporate worship.
To collaborate with congregations of all denominations through a series of workshops focusing on music in worship, biblical storytelling, liturgical art, and contemplative methods that allow all congregations to share their talents and best worship practices.
To design a process of catechism for those seeking baptism or confirmation in six diverse United Methodist congregations such that both the catechumenate and the congregations are renewed through the Easter Vigil celebration.
To learn about how the design of a worship space teaches, invites, inspires, and connects in order to foster versatile, multigenerational, mission-focused, biblical worship in a growing rural church.
To explore biblical themes of justice and peacemaking through education, fellowship, and theological reflection and to express these themes in corporate worship such that they lead to community service.
To gather information and establish a common set of expectations and values for worship services, to identify planning models that work within the framework of shared responsibility, and to implement these guidelines and models in the long-range planning of a year of worship services.
To introduce African Church to Western liturgical concepts and to introduce Western religious communities to the African concept of community worship and daily life through a five week series that focuses on five basic elements of worship, including planning and creating music, dance, sermons, testimonies, dramas, oral story telling, and artwork by various ages in the congregation that echo African cultural traditions, and also through intercessory prayer for Africa, the national leadership of Africa, victims of HIV-AIDS, the economic development of Africa, and the Christian church in Africa.
To explore worship renewal through a collaboration of seminary students, pastors, lay persons, and other ministry professionals from various racial, ethnic, and cultural communities during a pastoral leadership conference.
To encourage continuity of worship practices in daily life by studying with local pastors, educating and training congregational leaders in Adult Sunday School, presenting a monthly drama that focuses on particular practices to encourage the development of that habit in personal life, and designing and displaying monthly banners to reinforce each practice.
To examine historic traditions of African American worship and incorporate them into worship services, through a process that includes 40 ministry leaders who will participate in a 13-week Bible study, retreat, seminars, and a citywide worship service.
