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.
Mission United Presbyterian Church
To equip a new generation of worship leaders with musical skills and vocal techniques to foster the creation of worship experiences that connect with and reach out to people from the surrounding community.
North Hills Hispanic Mission UMC
To create a worship team and provide the group with initial formative training on musical skills and biblical-theological foundations.
Nueva Esperanza Covenant Church
To create a youth choir and train choir members and worship leaders on vocal techniques.
Restauración Los Ángeles
To develop a new generation of church musicians and worship leaders who, in addition to typical roles, could acquire skills required to compose new congregational songs and to produce new worship music.
St. Gregory’s Hall Sacred Music Program
To encourage multisensory worship and a deeper appreciation for the incarnational nature of the Christian faith by creating a sacred music program that includes instruction on the theology of worship, special music in festival liturgies, and a retreat.
St. John’s Abbey
To promote ecumenical worship and hymn singing by hosting multi-choir hymn festivals and offering organ lessons focused on creative hymn accompaniment.
The Luke Church
To facilitate discipleship by deeply engaging the stories of Advent and Easter through multiple disciplines, including theology, personality, technology, and worship arts.
Women’s Sacred Music Project
To enrich worshipers’ understanding of God by curating a collection of new worship resources by, for, and about women that highlights marginalized perspectives and embraces a more mysterious image of the divine.
Zoe Center
To facilitate deep engagement with scripture through song by gathering worship leaders, musicians, and pastors to study scripture and then write worship songs inspired by those scriptures.
Anabaptist 91 Network
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.
Hope College
David Keep
David Keep
To deepen worshipers' theology and spiritual life by creating an online Advent calendar that features visual art and music, and by holding art interpretation events and panel discussions in which participants engage theological truths—particularly the incarnation—through the arts.
Iglesia Luterana Príncipe de Paz
To create a children’s choir to include children in the church’s worship services and enhance the congregational worship experience.