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 more fully engage children in corporate worship and to uncover ways to make singing, worship rituals, and community life more inclusive of all ages.
To provide a space for Korean-speaking and bilingual households to worship, pray, and listen to God’s word in culturally and spiritually relevant ways.
To implement embodied and intercultural worship led by pastors, artists, and community members, to renew faith through narrative, liturgy, and artistic expression, and to strengthen both resilience and hope.
To build healing-centered, trauma-informed worship practices using the psalms and the arts through a variety of community events and workshops.
To develop an inclusive worship environment by modifying worship practices and creating resources that will encourage the participation of persons living with dementia and help equip their caregivers.
To strengthen congregational participation, formation, and belonging by spending a year studying, designing, and practicing intergenerational worship.
To promote racial healing and to become a more multiethnic, multicultural, and multigenerational congregation by developing multicultural worship expressions and learning activities.
To equip lay and ordained preachers with practical tools and theological understanding to empower them to be innovative, inclusive, creative, confident, and spiritually attuned worship leaders and pastors.
To implement a contextualized spiritual formation program integrating personal, family, ecclesial, and community life.
Erin Raffety
To equip worshiping communities to recognize and lift up leaders with disabilities in church contexts by working with Christian leaders to model inclusive leadership practices.
To launch an intergenerational worship formation project pairing older mentors and students to learn and model prayer, worship, and scripture reading to foster deeper and lasting spiritual disciplines and a sustainable culture of vibrant faith expression.
To engage the spiritual disciplines in worship in order to promote spiritual flourishing for the seminary community as well as nearby community churches.
