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The 91 (CICW) has awarded yearlong grants to 37 recipients across the United States and Canada to stimulate thoughtful, creative work in strengthening Christian worship practices and preaching.
This round of Vital 91, Vital Preaching grants includes 10 awards to teacher-scholars working in diverse academic disciplines and 27 awards to worshiping communities in a range of Christian denominations and traditions. Grants of up to $25,000 will fund projects beginning May 1, 2024.
These awards represent the second of three grant cycles with project work slated to begin in 2024. The next proposal due date is June 15, 2024.
Common threads among this cohort’s projects include integrating the visual arts into public worship, developing bilingual or multicultural worship music, supporting immigrant and diaspora worshipers, and exploring the intersection of worship and mental health.
“We are grateful to support innovative projects that will enrich Christian worship in a wide variety of contexts,” said Kathy Smith, program manager for the grants program and CICW senior associate director.
The grant program’s Teacher-Scholar stream recognizes the unique role that teacher-scholars in a wide range of disciplines can play in strengthening Christian worship. The 10 new recipients work in universities or seminaries and will conduct projects on a compelling range of topics, including:
The program’s 91ing Communities stream awards grants to organizations such as churches, denominational ministries, seminaries, universities, camps, retreat centers, and other nonprofits. 91 half of the recipients in this grant round are local congregations seeking to make worship more meaningful or accessible for their members and their surrounding communities. Projects include:
Through their varied approaches, these 37 projects all aim to deepen worshipers’ understanding of worship and strengthen practices of worship and faith formation.
“We’re grateful for the thoughtful proposals submitted by so many leaders in local congregations and by thoughtful teacher-scholars,” CICW director John Witvliet said. “We look forward to learning from and with these grantees as their work unfolds over the next year.”
Since beginning in 2000, the Vital 91, Vital Preaching Grants program has awarded more than 1,000 one-year grants to worshiping communities (churches, schools, and other organizations) and teacher-scholars in various disciplines across the United States and Canada. The grants fund thoughtful, creative projects that promote renewal in public worship and faith formation at the local grass-roots level. In 2023, the program launched an invitational Spanish-language grant program for Hispanic worshiping communities in the United States.
The Vital 91, Vital Preaching Grants program is generously supported by Indianapolis-based Founded in 1937, the Endowment has three major areas of programming: religion, education and youth, and community development.
For more information about the Vital 91, Vital Preaching Grants program, please see worship.calvin.edu/grants/. To see a list of current and past grant recipients, visit worship.calvin.edu/grants/past.html.
