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 reflect theologically on communal worship that incorporates prayer, praise, and servant leadership, in order to facilitate deeper participation and engagement with God in worship.
To increase worshipers' awareness of God by engaging worship through different pathways and through the various ways members of the community connect with God.
To promote a more meaningful encounter with God's word in the text and in worshipers' lives by engaging diverse artistic experiences of scripture in worship.
To listen to and reflect on students’ experience of worship and to experiment with music, visual art, and space in worship in order to deepen and diversify student leadership and participation.
To educate and empower lay leaders and congregations to understand and embrace the various worship cultures that are part of the Mennonite song tradition in North America.
To develop age-appropriate preschool chapel worship and classroom faith formation by exploring how children worship and connecting little ones' lives to God.
To use worship arts rituals as a tool to cultivate spiritual transformation in the lives of young people.
To create a consortium of young adults who will be trained and mentored to design and execute a monthly ecumenical, multicultural, and multigenerational worship gathering.
To engage the local community in theological reflection on worship that deepens worshiper’s experience of God by enacting the word of God in many contexts.
To foster unity among different African ethnic communities and awareness of varying worship needs and experiences by facilitating collaboration among worship leaders at African ethnic churches.
To develop a program that will assist churches in becoming physically, culturally, and spiritually accessible to people with disabilities, in order to create worshiping communities that honor the gifts and full participation of each person.
To integrate engagement with God through the arts into worship by cultivating a community of artists who will serve in a variety of churches.
