CICW has awarded Vital 91, 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.
Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church
To support worshipers with mental health challenges by promoting mental health awareness, training congregants to offer peer support, and encouraging mental well-being through music ministry.
Anglican Diocese of Edmonton
To create new baptismal resources that educate and encourage new believers in ways that respond to the needs of diverse twenty-first-century Christian families.
Ashland Theological Seminary
Amy David Abdallah
Amy David Abdallah
To explore how Christians think about, experience, and mark death, both physical and metaphorical, in order to help Christians acknowledge death more meaningfully in their personal, small-group, and corporate worship.
Azusa Pacific University
To foster a dynamic, participatory, and creative worship community where young adults can engage with God through visual arts, music, and worship leadership training.
Bethel Community Presbyterian Church
To reimagine the practice of the Lord’s Supper—including designing table installations, creating contextualized liturgies, and hosting culturally specific "love feasts"—to represent the diversity of Christ's body and enrich the spirit of celebration surrounding communion.
Board of World Mission
To create liturgical and educational resources that equip Moravian clergy and lay leaders to guide worshipers in connecting their faith with social justice.
Broadway United Methodist Church
To cultivate congregational commitments to justice and diversity by training worship leaders to incorporate music from various cultural traditions, commissioning new works, and collaborating with neighboring arts organizations.
California Prestige University (formerly Presbyterian Theological Seminary in America)
To unite existing Korean-, English-, and Chinese-speaking Christian communities in worship by training leaders for new multilingual chapel services featuring rotating language leadership and real-time translation.
Calvin University
Clair Mesick
Clair Mesick
To study New Testament texts on despair, suicide, and mental disorder (“madness”) in their historical and cultural contexts and to consult with experts in pastoral care and psychology to consider implications for the contemporary church context and to provide resources for preaching on these topics that do not demonize mental illness.
Calvin University
Forrest Wakeman
Forrest Wakeman
To encourage deeper appreciation of God’s redemptive pursuit of God’s people through preparing for (including learning the music and studying the text) a premier performance of a large-scale choral and orchestral work that sets Old Testament texts by the biblical prophets as a dialogue between God and God’s people.
Catholic Theological Union
Edward Foley
Edward Foley
To empower preachers to effectively engage with science in their sermons and homilies through a training program and the creation of digital resources.
Christ Church Cranbrook
To facilitate active worship by teaching congregants about embodied worship and developing worship activities available for communal and devotional use on an app.