The Lord's Heritage Church

Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 28, 2026

Applies to: the Heritage Online website and mobile apps of The Lord's Heritage Church.

1. Who we are

Heritage Online is operated by Lords Heritage Church Inc., the nonprofit organization behind The Lord's Heritage Church.

In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Lords Heritage Church Inc., and "the church" means The Lord's Heritage Church and its ministries.

Lords Heritage Church Inc. (The Lord's Heritage Church)
2525 C E Galloway Blvd, Shreveport, LA 71104
Phone: (318) 848-7312
Email: info@lordsheritage.org
Website: https://home.lordsheritage.org

Heritage Online is the church's website, member portal and mobile app. It lets our church family connect with each other, follow services and events, give online, and stay in touch with church leadership. This policy explains what information we collect through Heritage Online, why we collect it, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have.

2. Information we collect

We collect only what each part of the service needs. Nothing below is collected for advertising, and we do not build advertising profiles of anyone.

2.1 Information you give us through public forms (no account needed)

Plan a Visit — Name, email, phone, household size, whether you are bringing children, the service you plan to attend, and any questions or comments
Visitor Card — Name, email, phone, mailing address, preferred contact method, how you heard about us, interest areas, an optional prayer request, and whether you want contact
Prayer Request — Name, optional email, your request, whether you would like follow-up (email addresses for an anonymous-submitted prayer request may be recorded)
Volunteer Application — First and last name, email, phone, the ministry you are applying for, and your faith background as you describe it
Give (guest giving) — The name and email you enter for your receipt, and the gift details
Account deletion request — The email on your account, your name, an optional reason, and your acknowledgement of what we keep

2.2 Information in your member account

When church staff create an account for you and you complete your profile, we hold:

Your name and email address, and the role assigned to you (member, ministry leader, finance administrator, associate pastor, pastor, or administrator).
Optional profile details you choose to enter: phone number, mailing address, city, state, ZIP code, and preferred contact method.
Church-life details that staff record: your household identifier, the date you became a member, and your baptism date.
Sign-in information managed by our platform provider. We never see or store your password.
If you sign in with Google, Google confirms your identity to us and shares your name and email address. We do not receive your Google password.

We do not collect dates of birth, ages, government identifiers, social security numbers, bank account numbers, biometric information, or a structured medical record anywhere in Heritage Online.

Some boxes in Heritage Online are free text: a prayer request, a note you add to an event registration, or the faith-background answer on a volunteer application could contain health or medical information if you choose to type it there. We do not ask for medical records and we do not file health information into medical records, but anything you volunteer in those boxes is stored with that submission as described in section 11. Please share only what you are comfortable giving us.

2.3 Your choices about being listed and contacted

These are two separate choices, and each is off unless you turn it on:

Member directory — being listed so other members can find you and message you. Church leadership positions are always listed so members can reach their leaders.
Church-wide communications — receiving messages sent by the Pastor to members who have opted in.

Turning on one does not turn on the other. You can change either at any time in your profile settings, or ask the church office to change it for you.

2.4 Messages you send and receive

Private messages between accounts, and church-wide messages sent by the Pastor, are stored in your Heritage Online mailbox. A message is stored once and appears in both the sender's mailbox and the recipient's mailbox; each mailbox keeps its own archive and delete flags for that message. Messages are delivered inside Heritage Online; they are not sent to your email address. If the member who wrote a message later deletes their account, messages verified as authored by them have their subject and body replaced with a short notice in shared mailboxes. Independently authored messages from other participants may remain. Ambiguous legacy records require separate review (see section 12).

2.5 Event registrations, attendance and groups

Event registrations you make: the event, your name and email, your registration status, whether you volunteered to help, and any note you add.
Attendance: recorded by church staff for services, classes and events, so we can care for our congregation and report on ministry activity.
Group memberships: which groups you belong to, your role in the group, and your join date.

2.6 Online giving

When you give online we record the gift amount, the fund (tithe, offering or sponsorship), the date, whether you described the gift as recurring or one-time and how often, the payment method category, the name and email you gave for the receipt, your Stripe payment reference, and — if you were signed in — the link to your member account.

We never receive or store your card number. Card details are entered into a payment form provided by Stripe, Inc. and go directly to Stripe. Our servers receive only a payment confirmation.

2.7 Pastoral and church records

Pastoral notes are confidential church ministry records kept by the Pastor and Associate Pastor — for example care visits, counselling follow-up and prayer needs. They are maintained independently of member portal accounts.
Staff notes are personnel records kept by the Pastor only.
Official church records document baptisms, weddings, funerals and dedications, including the people involved, the officiant and details of the service.

2.8 Account deletion requests and verification records

When you ask us to delete an account we keep a record of the request: the email and name on the account, your optional reason, when you asked, how and when ownership of the account was confirmed, the staff member who handled it, the steps taken, any failure and retry history, and the scheduled review date for the record itself. We store only a scrambled one-way fingerprint (hash) of the confirmation link we email you — never the link itself.

2.9 Technical information

Our hosting provider records standard technical information such as the time of a request and the address it came from, in server logs used to operate and secure the service.
To stop abuse of public forms (repeated giving attempts or repeated deletion requests) we keep a counter keyed to a one-way hash of the connecting network address. The raw address is never stored in that counter. The counter resets when its rate-limit window expires; the counter record itself is not deleted automatically.
Your browser stores a sign-in token so you stay signed in, and remembers small interface choices (for example a dismissed prompt or a collapsed menu).
We do not use advertising cookies, advertising identifiers, third-party analytics, tracking pixels, or location services. The platform Heritage Online runs on does keep its own first-party usage records; those are described in section 13.

3. How we use information

We use personal information to:

Create and administer member accounts, and let you sign in.
Let members find and message one another when they have chosen to be listed.
Send church-wide communications to members who have opted in.
Register members for events, record attendance, and organise groups and ministries.
Receive and receipt gifts, keep church financial records, and issue annual contribution statements.
Respond to prayer requests, visitor cards, visit plans, volunteer applications and questions.
Provide pastoral care, and maintain official church records.
Keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fraud, and diagnose faults.
Handle account deletion and privacy requests, and keep the audit record of how each was handled.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

4. How we protect information

Access to Heritage Online records requires a signed-in account. Accounts are created by church staff, not by self-registration, and a person cannot reach church records until staff have added them.
Access rules are enforced by the platform, not just by the interface: each type of record is readable only by the roles listed in section 5. Attempts to reach records outside those roles are refused by the server.
Card payments are handled entirely by Stripe; card numbers never reach our systems.
Public forms that could be abused (giving, deletion requests) are rate-limited.
Deletion requests cannot be acted on until ownership of the account has been confirmed through a single-use link sent to the address on the account.
The site is served over HTTPS.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure. We limit collection to what the ministry needs, review who holds access, and review privacy and security concerns raised with us.

5. Who may see private church information

Your own profile, giving history, registrations, group memberships, prayer requests, mailbox, deletion request — You, and church staff in the roles listed below
Member directory listing — Other signed-in members, only if you opt in; leadership positions are always listed
Private messages — The sender and recipient; church administrators have technical access to stored records
Church-wide communications and their delivery records — The Pastor
Prayer requests — The Pastor and Associate Pastor, plus your own view of what you submitted
Event registrations and attendance — Church administrators; group and ministry leaders as needed for their ministry
Giving records — You (your own gifts), the Pastor, and church administrators; finance administrators can record gifts
Pastoral notes — The Pastor and Associate Pastor only
Staff notes — The Pastor only
Official church records (baptism, wedding, funeral, dedication) — Church leadership
Account deletion records — Church leadership
Invitation attestations (staff confirmation that an invited person is 18 or older) — Church administrators and the Pastor
Visitor cards, visit plans, volunteer applications — Church leadership

6. Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run Heritage Online. Their processing is governed by the services they provide and their applicable terms and privacy policies:

Base44 — provides the hosting, database, sign-in and email delivery that Heritage Online runs on, and stores the files used by the platform. Church data is processed so that these services can be provided to us.
Stripe, Inc. — processes online gifts and card payments, and provides payment receipts.
Google — (a) if you choose "Sign in with Google", Google confirms your identity and shares your name and email address; (b) fonts used on the site are loaded from Google's font service, which means your browser contacts Google when a page loads.

When you click through to a sermon video or another external site, that service receives your request under its own privacy policy. We do not embed third-party tracking into our pages.

7. Financial giving and payment processing

Online gifts are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe's payment form and are never received or stored by the church.
We keep the gift amount, fund, date, receipt name and email, recurrence description, payment reference, and (for signed-in givers) the account link, so we can receipt gifts, answer questions, reconcile the bank, and issue annual contribution statements.
Each gift is an individual payment transaction. When you describe a gift as recurring and choose a frequency, we record that description for our records; Heritage Online does not set up or collect an automatic recurring charge. A new gift has to be made each time.
Contribution statements are generated on your device from your own giving records and are not emailed automatically.
Guest givers are identified only by the name and email they type. An unverified address is never used to attach a gift to a member's giving history.
Giving and financial records are kept for seven years (see section 11).

8. Member directory and communication preferences

Being listed in the member directory is your choice and is off by default.
If you opt in, other signed-in members can see your name and message you. Members can message church leadership regardless of directory settings, and an existing conversation stays replyable.
Receiving church-wide communications is a separate choice and is also off by default.
You can change both settings yourself in your profile, or ask the church office to change them for you.

9. Church-wide communications

Church-wide messages are sent by the Pastor, inside Heritage Online, to members who have opted in to receive them.
They are stored in your mailbox along with a delivery record, so the church can be accountable for what was sent and to whom.
We do not send church-wide communications to members who have not opted in.

10. Pastoral confidentiality and church records

Pastoral notes are confidential church ministry records. They are maintained independently of the member portal and are not part of your portal account.
If you ask us to address personal information contained within pastoral records, we handle that as a separate confidential review with the Pastor, taking into account applicable obligations, rather than as part of routine account deletion.
Official church records — baptisms, weddings, funerals and dedications — are the church's historical register and are preserved.
Deleting a portal account does not delete pastoral records. It does remove or de-identify the portal information described in section 12.

11. How long we keep information

Account and profile — Until a verified deletion request is completed
Directory listing and communication preferences — Until you change them, or until your account is deleted
Private messages and mailbox information — Handled by the deletion procedure described in section 12
Prayer requests, event registrations, group memberships — Removed when an account is deleted
Attendance history — Kept for church reporting; the person is de-identified when an account is deleted
Giving and financial records — Seven years
Visitor cards and Plan a Visit submissions — 24 months after the last documented contact, unless an ongoing church relationship or a documented exception applies
Volunteer applications — 24 months after the application closes or the volunteer's service ends, subject to applicable legal or safeguarding obligations
Account deletion audit record — 24 months after completion, subject to documented exceptions
Official church records (baptism, wedding, funeral, dedication) — Preserved as historical church records
Pastoral notes — Maintained independently as confidential church ministry records, subject to separate privacy review
Staff notes — Personnel records, kept by the Pastor
Abuse-prevention counters (hashed network address) — Reset at the end of each rate-limit window; the counter record is retained and is not automatically deleted
Invitation attestations (staff confirmation of 18+ before an invitation) — Kept as part of the administrative record, reviewed in the periodic retention review

How these periods are applied. Retention is managed through periodic manual retention reviews carried out quarterly by church staff. Heritage Online does not run automatic expiry or scheduled deletion, and we do not claim that information disappears on a particular date without staff action. Where the law requires us to keep something longer, or where a documented legal or safeguarding exception applies, we keep it for that period only.

12. Account deletion and requests about your information

You can ask us to delete your account at any time, from two places:

In the app: My Profile → Account Settings → Delete My Account
On the website: Account Deletion (no app or sign-in required)

How it works:

You submit the request with the email address on your account.
If an account exists for that address, we email a single-use confirmation link to it. Opening the link proves the request came from the account owner. It expires after 24 hours and never asks for a password.
Church staff review the request and exactly what is connected to the account.
Once ownership is confirmed and the review is complete, the account's portal information is removed or de-identified as described below, and the platform account itself is removed and the removal verified by staff.
We email you when the request is complete, to the address on the account.

Our internal goal is to complete a verified deletion request within 14 calendar days. If we need more time — for example where records need staff review or a legal obligation applies — we will tell you at the address on the account and explain why.

What deletion removes

Your account and sign-in details; your profile information (name, email, phone, address); your directory listing and communication preferences; your mailbox settings and archive/delete flags; your prayer requests; your event registrations and group memberships; your copies of church-wide messages; and the visitor cards, planned visits and volunteer applications that carry your email address.

What is de-identified rather than removed

Shared messages. For messages verified as authored by you, the original subject and body are redacted. In the other participant's mailbox the subject becomes "Message removed" and the body becomes "Message removed following account deletion." Your name, email address and account link are removed or anonymized. Only the non-personal details that keep their conversation readable remain: direction, when it was sent, and where it sits in the conversation. Messages another member wrote to you keep that person's own subject and text untouched, with your identity and the link to your account removed. A message you exchanged only with yourself is deleted. Ambiguous legacy records, including conflicting account identifiers and email addresses, are flagged for separate review and may remain unchanged pending that review; they are not automatically removed.
Attendance. Attendance records keep the event and date so church reporting stays accurate, with your name and email address removed and replaced by "Former member".

What is kept, with links and contact details cleared

Groups you led are preserved; the leader slot is cleared and needs a new leader.
Leadership assignments are cleared from the position.
Giving and financial records keep the amount, date, fund and payment reference for seven years as accounting and tax records. The link to your account is cleared. The giving name and email you provided are kept, because a financial record must remain identifiable for receipting, audit and tax purposes.
Official church records — baptisms, weddings, funerals and dedications — are preserved as the church's historical register. The substance of the record (names, dates, officiant, participants and details) remains; unnecessary account links and the contact email address on the record are cleared.
Church-wide messages you sent keep the church's own sent record — the announcement text and the sender name recorded with it — because it is the church's record of what it sent to its congregation. The link to your account is cleared. Members' individual mailbox copies of those messages are emptied as described above.
A minimal audit record of the deletion is kept for 24 months, subject to documented exceptions.

What is not part of routine automated account deletion

Pastoral records are excluded from routine automated account deletion. They are never read, altered or de-linked by the deletion procedure. If you ask us to address personal information within pastoral records, we handle that as a separate confidential review with the Pastor, taking into account applicable obligations.
Staff file notes, where they exist, are employment records kept under employment obligations and reviewed by the Pastor.

For your privacy we do not confirm whether an account exists for a given address, and we reply only to the address on the account.

Other requests. You can also ask us to correct your information, or to tell you what we hold about you, by contacting the church office. We review privacy and security concerns raised with us and respond to the address you contact us from; we do not publish a guaranteed response period for these requests.

13. Cookies, analytics and technical information

Sign-in: a token in your browser keeps you signed in. Signing out clears it.
Interface preferences: your browser may remember small choices, such as a dismissed profile prompt or whether a menu was collapsed.
Platform usage records (first-party): the platform Heritage Online runs on records a small set of its own usage events — that a signed-in member opened the app, how long a session lasted, sign-in events, and aggregate counts of active users — so the church can tell whether the service is working and where members get stuck. These records are tied to app accounts. They are not used for advertising, not sold, and not shared with advertisers. They are held for us by our hosting provider, Base44, as described in section 6. The church cannot individually delete these platform-held usage records through routine account deletion; questions about them are referred to Base44.
Session recording is switched off. The platform's session-recording feature is disabled for this app, so that feature does not record your app interactions for replay.
No advertising, no cross-site tracking: Heritage Online does not use advertising cookies, advertising identifiers, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics, and we do not track you across other websites.
Server logs: our hosting provider keeps operational logs for security and troubleshooting.
Abuse prevention: public forms keep a rate-limit counter keyed to a one-way hash of the connecting network address. The raw address is not stored.
Fonts: page fonts load from Google's font service, which means your browser contacts Google.

14. Children and minors

Independent Heritage Online member accounts are available only to adults aged 18 or older.
Children and minors may take part in the ministries and activities of the church — worship services, Sunday School, discipleship classes and events. Their information is handled through parents, guardians, or authorized church personnel as appropriate to the ministry.
Accounts are created by church staff rather than by self-registration. Before an invitation can be sent, the staff member using Heritage Online must affirmatively confirm that the person is at least 18 years old and eligible for an independent account; the invitation cannot be sent without that confirmation. Each confirmation is recorded with the staff member's identity, the invited email address and the time it was made. Invitations sent directly from the Base44 dashboard bypass this attestation, so staff must use Heritage Online to invite members. We do not collect dates of birth, ages or identity documents in Heritage Online.
Information about a child reaches us only when a parent, guardian or adult provides it — for example a household size, a note that you are bringing children, or a Sunday School attendance entry made by authorized personnel.
If we learn that an account has been created for someone under 18, we will discuss it with the family and close or reassign the account as appropriate, retaining only what is required as described in section 12.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change how Heritage Online handles personal information, we will update this policy and change the date at the top. Where a change materially affects your choices, we will tell members through Heritage Online.

16. Contact us

Questions about this policy, or requests about your own information:

Lords Heritage Church Inc. (The Lord's Heritage Church)
2525 C E Galloway Blvd, Shreveport, LA 71104
(318) 848-7312
info@lordsheritage.org

The Pastor is responsible for privacy questions, account-deletion requests and other requests about your information. You can reach the Pastor through the church office at info@lordsheritage.org, by telephone, or by post at the address above.