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.

Public Witness
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Teacher-Scholar Justice Public Witness

Howard University School of Divinity

Harold Dean Trulear

To explore and disseminate best practices for shaping and sustaining a Christian social justice witness through corporate worship.

Teacher-Scholar
Washington, district of columbia
2024
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Teacher-Scholar Preaching Public Witness

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Carolyn B. Helsel

To encourage appreciation among Christian worshipers for our Jewish neighbors and reduce anti-Semitism by creating videos and written resources aimed at equipping preachers to approach biblical references to Jewish people through a framework of gratitude for our shared religious heritage.

Teacher-Scholar
Austin, texas
2023
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Teacher-Scholar Architecture/Space Public Witness

Eden Theological Seminary

Christopher Grundy

To foster imagination about worship spaces that can help to draw people into a deeper relationship with their natural environment, experience that environment as sacred and sacramental, form them spiritually as agents of ecological justice and recovery, and help them to process and respond faithfully to increasing ecological disasters.

Teacher-Scholar
Webster Groves, missouri
2022
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Teacher-Scholar Justice Public Witness

Emory University Candler School of Theology

Susan Bigelow Reynolds

To study public, lay-led Way of the Cross (Via Crucis) rituals that engage contemporary social injustices in light of the cross, exploring how communities on the margins of church and society use public ritual to practice theological agency.

Teacher-Scholar
Atlanta, georgia
2022
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Teacher-Scholar Public Witness Worship Resources

Villanova University

Wonchul Shin

To provide Asian and Asian-American worshiping communities with rich Pan-Asian theological resources for their public worship practice as a form of public witness that will proclaim the dignity of the Asian and Asian-American community and transform the culture of anti-Asian violence and racism.

Teacher-Scholar
Villanova, pennsylvania
2022
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Teacher-Scholar Cultural Engagement Public Witness

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Demetrius K. Williams

To explore the cross of Christ in African American Christian experience as motivation for piety, political engagement, and social protest by researching spirituals, narratives, sermons, and other resources that highlight the importance of the cross of Christ for notions of freedom and the unity of humanity in the church's public witness.

Teacher-Scholar
Milwaukee, wisconsin
2021
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Teacher-Scholar Hermeneutics Public Witness

Boston University School of Theology

Shively Smith

To identify the metaphors and images that shape the interpretation of Scripture within worshiping communities, and to assess the impact of these interpretive images on a community’s relationship to various “others” and socio-political realities.

Teacher-Scholar
Boston, massachusetts
2020
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Teacher-Scholar Public Witness Sacraments

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Andrew Wymer and Kristen Daley Mosier

To engage the baptismal practices of diverse Christian communities in regions impacted by toxic water, and to construct a theoretical and practical vision of baptismal solidarity for the broader Church.

Teacher-Scholar
Evanston, illinois
2020
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Teacher-Scholar Missional Public Witness

Calvin University

Lee Hardy

To study the connection between congregations' worship and mission activities, focusing on church-supported affordable housing in gentrifying urban neighborhoods.

Teacher-Scholar
Grand Rapids, michigan
2019
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Teacher-Scholar Historical Public Witness

Dominican House of Studies/Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception

Andrew Hofer, O.P.

To study seven early Christian preachers who model various aspects of "incarnational" preaching and produce a resource encouraging preachers to integrate public speech with all of life.

Teacher-Scholar
Washington, district of columbia
2019
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Teacher-Scholar Collaboration Public Witness

Union Presbyterian Seminary

Paul Galbreath

To develop liturgical resources for congregational use that link Christian discipleship and earth care, grounding environmental advocacy in corporate worship practices.

Teacher-Scholar
Richmond, virginia
2019
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