The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (CICW) announced last week that Dr. Jennifer Allen Craft, associate professor of theology and humanities, is a recipient of the Vital Worship, Vital Preaching grant.
The CICW has awarded yearlong grants to 48 recipients throughout the United States and Canada to stimulate thoughtful, innovative work aimed at strengthening Christian worship practices and preaching.
The latest round of Vital Worship, Vital Preaching grants includes 15 awards to teacher-scholars working in various academic disciplines and 33 awards to worshiping communities in diverse Christian traditions and denominations. Grant awards of up to $25,000 will fund projects beginning Sept. 1, 2024.
“Over the course of the 2024-25 academic year, this grant will look specifically at the way ecclesial communities can engage confessional practices to think about their relationship to place, especially encountering their historical and present ‘sins of place,’” said Craft. “It will further invite the church to imagine the ways it might participate in more redemptive place-based practices in the future.”
“The outputs of the grant will be the completion of two scholarly book chapters, a series of workshops on theological practices of placemaking, and a collaborative art project and public-facing art installation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in LaGrange, Georgia,” said Craft.
“We are grateful to celebrate the vision of leaders in so many local worshiping communities who are eager to learn and grow, and of teacher-scholars eager to serve worshiping communities with their expertise,” CICW director John Witvliet said. “It is inspiring to see such generativity emerging in so many contexts across North America.”
