Redeemer Information Policy

This page was last updated on September 29, 2022.

 

Thanks to social media, email subscriptions, e-commerce, and so on, more and more of our personal information is floating around out there — which can be unsettling. It’s difficult to know who knows what, how much they know, and what they’re doing with that information. Which is why we want to let you know what types of information we’re gathering about Redeemer’s people, and what we’re using it for.

Redeemer does gather information about our congregation, and we use this information for several purposes, including:

  • Planning worship services

  • Finding ways for people to better serve in the church

  • Managing Redeemer’s various ministries and teams

  • Making it easier for the people of Redeemer to contact each other

Much of this information is stored and managed in a tool called Planning Center, a respected and well-known church management tool. We use Planning Center to keep track of Redeemer’s members, attendees, and visitors, as well as plan worship services and process nursery check-ins. Planning Center may contain the following types of information about you and your family: names, contact info (addresses, phone numbers, email addresses), social media links, and birth and anniversary dates.

Planning Center is also used for our church directory, which can be accessed via the Church Center app. You can control what information about you and your family appears in the directory.

We currently use three tools to communicate with the Redeemer congregation at large. The first is Mailchimp, an email newsletter service that is used to send out the weekly Redeemer email bulletin. The second is our Redeemer email list. The third tool is Clearstream, which allows us to send out congregation-wide text messages using your phone number (for example, if we ever cancel a service due to weather). Clearstream also allows us to receive texts, such as texts from new visitors or prayer requests.

Note: You can unsubscribe at any time from these three services if you no longer want to receive notifications.

Finally, you might notice people with cameras at various church functions, like Camp Redeemer or the unity service. From time to time, we may use photos from these events on our website, Facebook page, and other church communications. If you do not want us to use photos of you or your family, please let us know.

Our goal is to find a balance between respecting people’s online privacy while also using information about Redeemer’s congregation to better serve it. If you have any questions or concerns about how Redeemer is using your information, please let us know.