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 intentionally engage the views of the full range of our racially and economically diverse congregation about the meaning and purpose of worship and to integrate their ideas, gifts, and perspectives into worship practices that feel authentic and hospitable to all.
To illuminate God’s beauty and brilliance in Durham’s public housing communities by offering liturgical arts learning events and collaborating with public housing residents to plan and host outdoor worship services.
To create embodied, tactile, and participatory worship practices and liturgies to promote communal engagement and create a hospitable and accessible worship environment.
To embody a connection between Christian liturgy and ethical living by implementing a hospitable, ecumenical, multicultural, and bilingual worship gathering for students, staff, and faculty that emphasizes the well-being of the planet and the healing of broken relationships, especially those with Indigenous peoples.
To encourage meaningful connection to the idea of Christian community within a Hispanic context through the exploration of community-oriented worship practices.
To engage youth and young adults by remembering and retelling stories of the Black church through development of a lectionary, worship guide, and Sunday School curriculum emphasizing the seven principles of Kwanzaa.
To enable collaborative worship planning and leadership through worship leader training, exploration of the congregation’s spiritual gifts, video creation, special music opportunities, and household worship kits.
To create a safe place of healing for people seeking to reclaim their faith and its expression in their own cultural contexts by planning services that highlight a plethora of cultural expressions of worship and shaping the liturgy to encourage different cultural expressions of various faith practices.
To gather songwriters, poets, and artists to produce songs, prayers, art pieces, and videos that will resource and inspire under-resourced Anabaptist communities across North America.
To support, connect, and amplify Christian college students who deeply care about God's earth by creating liturgies of restoration that students can live out in their everyday lives as they connect worship and the mission to serve.
To deepen, enrich, and connect the individual and corporate worship life of congregants by drawing on the devotional practices of the saints throughout history in aesthetically rich and cohesive worship experiences that have corresponding practices which engage the senses and foster embodied devotional practices at home.
To educate the congregation on the twelve confessions of faith using the five senses in public worship services.
