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 discern the theological distinctiveness and ethnocultural diversity of the church’s music by providing tools to evaluate CCLI Top 100 praise music from an Anabaptist theological perspective.
To engage in liturgies and educational roundtables that facilitate inclusive attitudes and practices that welcome those who have been historically marginalized.
To cultivate holy curiosity about what God is doing in the world and in the lives of fellow congregants by connecting our story with God’s story through retreats, guest presenters, and the crafting of new liturgies.
To encourage members to engage scripture by memorizing a weekly scripture passage with accompanying devotions, sermons, and other creative means.
To promote spiritual healing and renewal, cultural expression, and deeper connection between the congregation and the broader community through the development of a weekly gospel jazz worship service.
To empower lay leaders to create digital worship services that enable lay leaders in other rural churches to facilitate worship without a clergy member.
To cultivate practices of embodied worship that reflect the diversity of the congregation and the surrounding community to deepen capacity for communal embodied worship.
Rolanda L. Ward
To encourage social witness within public worship through a study of congregational prayer and corporate confession.
Barry Whatley
To explore the vital role of poetic imagination and creative expression of poetry in enhancing spiritual formation and worship in the local church.
Jennifer Allen Craft
To help Christians recognize and confess how sin distorts our relationship to place and hinders our ability to love our neighbors, and to help the church develop artistic practices of placemaking that advance the kingdom of God by promoting justice, beauty, and connection.
To explore a theology of the body to provide a foundation for leadership and laity to engage theologically and practically around issues of mental health, race, gender, and ability.
To support Christian peacemakers by developing regular opportunities for virtual corporate worship and by sharing together in the joys and griefs of peacemaking through the practices of prayer and praise, celebration and lament.
