Last updated: May 14, 2026

Privacy Policy & Disclaimer

This Privacy Policy explains how First Baptist Church Huntsville collects, uses, protects, and shares information through our website, mobile app, registration forms, giving tools, check-in systems, communications, and related church management services.

Summary: We collect information to operate church ministry, care for people, manage households, process giving, support events and check-in, communicate with you, and protect our systems. We do not sell personal information. This page also serves as a general website and app disclaimer regarding ministry systems and third-party services.
Disclaimer: Information on this website and in the mobile app is provided for church communication and ministry purposes. While we work to keep content accurate and secure, services may change and availability is not guaranteed.

1. Information We Collect

Depending on how you use our services, we may collect:

  • Account information such as username, email address, password hash, verification status, and login timestamps.
  • Personal and household information such as name, phone number, address, birthday/date of birth, gender, family relationships, spouse/child/household roles, anniversary date, member status, profile photos, and notes provided to church staff.
  • Registration and visitor information submitted through account registration, Plan Your Visit, contact forms, event forms, group forms, family updates, and check-in intake forms.
  • Children and family member information you provide for household records, ministry care, age-appropriate programs, child/student safety, and check-in.
  • Giving information such as donation amount, fund, date, recurring gift settings, donor memo, status, receipt URL, and payment processor identifiers. We do not store full card or bank account numbers on our servers.
  • Member directory preferences and directory access requests, including whether staff have approved directory access.
  • Event, group, scheduling, availability, reminder, and attendance/check-in information.
  • Media uploads and related metadata, such as photos/videos, filename, file type, file size, title, description, and submitting user.
  • Technical information such as device/browser type, IP address, approximate location/time zone from network information, referrer host, pages requested, API requests, status codes, duration, and bot detection signals.
  • Email and communication records such as verification emails, password reset emails, profile reminders, contact ticket messages, and staff replies.

2. Why We Collect Birthdays and Family Relationships

Birthdays and household relationships help us distinguish people with similar names, support age-appropriate ministry, protect children and students, manage check-in, maintain accurate family records, and provide pastoral care. Birthdays are required when registering people through the mobile app because they are important for identity matching and safe ministry operations.

3. How We Use Information

We use information to:

  • Create and manage user accounts, family records, member profiles, and mobile app sessions.
  • Operate church directory, giving, registration, events, groups, check-in, media upload, communications, and moderation workflows.
  • Send verification, password reset, reminder, registration, event, and staff-response emails.
  • Review new registrations, family link requests, profile changes, event submissions, directory requests, and uploaded media.
  • Process one-time and recurring donations and provide receipts, reports, refunds, and accounting records.
  • Protect children, families, members, staff, and church systems from unauthorized access, fraud, abuse, or security incidents.
  • Improve reliability, diagnose errors, understand public website traffic, and maintain system security.

4. Giving and Stripe

Online giving and saved payment methods are processed by Stripe. Stripe may collect payment card, bank account, billing, device, fraud-prevention, and transaction information according to its own policies. We receive and store limited payment-related records such as donation amounts, funds, dates, statuses, Stripe customer/payment/subscription identifiers, receipt URLs, and donor memos so we can provide receipts, giving history, refunds, reconciliation, and accounting records.

We do not store your full payment card numbers or full bank account details on our servers. Financial payment information is processed and stored through Stripe's systems.

Stripe's privacy policy is available at https://stripe.com/privacy.

5. Third-Party Services

We may use third-party providers to operate ministry systems, including:

  • Stripe for online giving, payment methods, recurring gifts, refunds, and customer portal features.
  • Email/SMTP providers to send account, registration, reminder, contact, and staff notification emails.
  • YouTube, Vimeo, or livestream providers for videos, live streams, thumbnails, and external playback.
  • Hosting, server, database, DNS, and security providers to run the website, APIs, mobile app backend, file storage, backups, logs, and security monitoring.

These providers process information according to their own terms and privacy policies.

6. Mobile App

The mobile app uses the same church account system as the website. Our apps are available on Google Play as FBC Huntsville Texas and on the Apple App Store as FBC Huntsville, Texas. The app stores a signed authentication token on your device so you can remain signed in. Staff may revoke mobile sessions from the church management system, which forces the app to ask you to sign in again. The app communicates with our server at https://www.fbchuntsville.org for account, family, directory, events, giving, media upload, and mobile app content.

7. Member Directory and Church Community Features

Directory access is limited to approved users. Directory visibility and fields may be controlled by household settings and staff review. Information shown in the directory may include names, household relationships, contact details, photos, and other fields permitted by settings and church policy.

8. Check-In, Events, Groups, and Attendance

We may record event participation, group involvement, availability preferences, reminders, check-in/check-out records, kiosk, attendance dates/times, and related audit logs. These records help us support safe ministry operations, class/group management, event planning, and follow-up.

9. Photos, Videos, and Uploaded Media

If you upload photos, videos, profile images, or media submissions, we store the files and associated metadata for church use, moderation, communication, and ministry purposes. Please upload only media you have permission to share.

10. Cookies, Logs, and Analytics

We use cookies/session storage for login and application functionality. We also keep server logs and privacy-conscious request analytics such as path, endpoint, status code, duration, user agent, referrer host, approximate visitor location/time zone, IP address or hashed IP, and signed-in user ID where applicable. These are used for security, troubleshooting, and site improvement.

11. How We Share Information

We do not sell personal information. We may share information:

  • With authorized church staff, ministry leaders, volunteers, and administrators who need it for ministry operations.
  • With service providers who help us operate the website, app, payments, communications, hosting, security, and support.
  • When required by law, subpoena, court order, legal process, or to protect safety, rights, property, or security.
  • With your direction or consent, including directory settings, uploads, event submissions, or other voluntary sharing.

12. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards, including password hashing, access controls, signed mobile tokens, staff permissions, HTTPS, and provider security controls. No system is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

13. Data Retention

We retain information as long as needed for church ministry, legal, accounting, safety, security, and administrative purposes. Giving records, accounting records, attendance/check-in records, communications, and moderation history may be retained for longer periods where necessary.

14. Children and Students

Family and child information may be provided by parents, guardians, or authorized adults for ministry, registration, check-in, and safety purposes. If you believe a child’s information was provided without proper authority, contact us so we can review it.

15. Your choices, access, and account deletion

Requesting deletion of your mobile app account (Google Play: FBC Huntsville Texas; Apple App Store: FBC Huntsville, Texas)

The same account is used on our website and mobile app for First Baptist Church Huntsville. If you use our app from Google Play or the Apple App Store under the names above, use the steps below to ask us to delete your login account and related personal data held in our church systems.

Steps to request deletion

  1. Email office@fbchuntsville.org from the email address on your church account, if possible (so we can verify you).
  2. Include your full name and the email address or username you use to sign in.
  3. State that you are requesting account deletion (or specify if you only want certain data corrected or removed).
  4. We may contact you using the information on file to confirm your identity before deleting or changing sensitive records.

What we typically delete or disable

After we verify your request and confirm it is lawful to do so, we disable your website/mobile login and may remove or anonymize profile fields and directory-related personal data stored in our church management system, church-submitted media uploads tied to your account where there is no obligation to keep them, tokens that keep you signed in on the app, and other account-level data that is not legally or administratively required to retain.

What we may need to keep

Some information may be retained for a period of time or permanently where the law, tax and accounting rules, audit, banking, child safety, safeguarding, or ministry administration require it. Examples can include gift and transaction records (amounts, funds, dates, receipt references, and limited payment-processor identifiers—we do not store full card numbers), attendance, check-in, or event records, moderation or security logs, and copies of correspondence about your request. Recurring gifts must be stopped separately; card and bank details managed in Stripe are subject to Stripe’s policies and tools (for example the customer portal or Stripe support), in addition to requests you send to the church office as described here.

We generally complete review of account-deletion requests within a reasonable time, often about 30 days, unless a longer period is needed for verification, legal holds, or coordinated changes with payment providers. We will confirm by email when reasonable.

You may also request access, correction, restriction, or portability of your information using the same email address. Some records may need to be retained for legal, accounting, security, safeguarding, or ministry administration reasons. You may sign out of the mobile app, request mobile session revocation from staff, update profile or family information where the app allows it, and manage directory visibility where enabled.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our website, app, ministry systems, or legal requirements change. The updated date at the top of the page identifies the latest version.

17. Contact Us

Questions, correction requests, deletion requests, or privacy concerns may be sent to office@fbchuntsville.org.

This policy is intended to describe First Baptist Church Huntsville's privacy practices for church website, mobile app, and related ministry systems.