Gather is a private community app that a church uses for its own members. Your church decides who may join and what its members share there; Gather Apps LLC (“we,” “us”) builds and runs the app on your church’s behalf, and publishes it on the App Store as Gather Church App. In this policy, “your church” means the congregation whose Gather you signed in to. This policy explains what information the app collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. By creating an account and using Gather, you agree to this policy.
Each church’s information is kept separate. Members of one church cannot see another church’s directory, messages, prayer requests, meals or photos. Your church can ask us to export or delete everything it holds in Gather.
Information we collect
- Account information you provide when you sign up: your first and last name and email address, and a password (stored securely by our authentication provider — we never see it in plain text).
- Profile information you choose to add: profile photo, phone number, address, household details, and group memberships.
- Content you createin the app: messages, photos, videos, voice messages, reactions, event and meal sign-ups, announcements, project pages, and recordings of group calls (see “Calls and recordings” below).
- Your favorites on the More tab: the places in the app you choose to keep at the top, in your order. They are kept with your profile so they follow you to your other devices. The short list of places you opened lately on the More tab stays on your phone and is never sent to us.
- Notification data:if you enable push notifications, a device subscription token so we can deliver alerts. On iPhone, the app also notes its version, the iOS version, and whether lock-screen reminder cards (Live Activities) are turned on, so we can tell why a card didn’t appear. You can turn this off at any time.
- Basic technical dataneeded to run the service, such as your login session, and when you last opened certain screens (so a “new” badge can clear once you’ve looked). Gather also counts how often each screen is opened, so we can see which parts of the app are used. Those counts use no cookies and are not tied to you: the names, people and conversations in an address are removed before it is counted. Gather does not use third-party advertising or tracking, and does not sell your information.
- Failed sign-in attempts.When a sign-in fails, we record the email address that was tried, the error, the kind of device, and the IP address, so a church leader can work out why someone can’t get in. Successful sign-ins are not recorded — we keep no log of when you open the app. These records are deleted automatically after 14 days.
How we use your information
- To create and secure your account and keep you signed in.
- To operate the app’s features — the member directory, messaging and calls, events, meals and sign-ups, groups, and announcements.
- To send notifications you’ve opted into (new messages, calls, reminders).
- To keep the community safe and enforce our Terms.
What other members can see
Gather is a shared community space. Your name and profile photo, and the messages and content you post, are visible to the other members you share conversations, groups, events, or the directory with. Please share only what you’re comfortable other church members seeing.
Prayer requests are visible to everyone in your church who is signed in. If you post anonymously your name is hidden from other members, though church leaders can see who shared it.
If you invite someone to an event on your personal calendar, they can see its title, date, time, place and notes, and you can see whether they accepted. Nothing else on your calendar is shared. An invitation for a child is sent to their parent, who answers for them.
Calls and recordings
Voice and video calls run through a media service (LiveKit) that carries the audio and video between the people on the call. Calls are not recorded by default and nothing is kept once a call ends.
A group call can be recorded by the person who started that conversation, someone they have made a manager of it, or a church administrator. A one-to-one call can be recorded by either person on it, from a computer, unless one of them is a child. When a recording starts, everyone on the call sees a red “REC” mark and a notice naming who is recording; by staying on the call you agree to be recorded. A group call’s recording is made by our call service (LiveKit), which delivers the video file directly into Gather’s storage; a one-to-one call’s is made on the recording person’s computer. When it is stopped or the call ends, the recording is posted in that conversation as a video, where the members of that conversation can watch it. It is stored with the conversation’s other files and stays until someone who can delete messages there deletes it. Calls in children’s groups, and calls made by a child, cannot be recorded.
Service providers
We use a small number of trusted providers to run the app. They process data only to provide their service to us:
- Supabase — secure database, authentication, and file storage.
- Vercel — application hosting, and the anonymous counts of screen visits described above.
- LiveKit— carries voice and video calls between the people on a call, and records a call when someone starts a recording, delivering the file to Gather’s storage.
- Crossway (ESV) and bible-api.com — supply the Bible text and, for the ESV, its audio and word search. Only the passage reference, or the words you search the ESV for, is sent; nothing about you. Searching the KJV happens inside Gather.
- OpenAI— reads Bible passages aloud in the app’s narrator voice, and works out where each verse begins in a recording so the words can be highlighted as you listen. Only the Bible text and the audio of it are sent; nothing you wrote or said. This runs on a paid API, which does not use what is submitted to train models.
- GIPHY — GIF search (your search terms are sent to GIPHY to return results; family-friendly results only).
- Web/native push services (such as Apple and Google) — to deliver notifications to your device if you enable them.
- Anthropic— the grouping assistant that church leaders can use to work out fellowship groups. When a leader asks it something, the family names shown on that screen and the instruction they typed are sent to Anthropic to be interpreted. Nothing else is sent: no addresses, phone numbers, children’s names, email addresses, or account identifiers. The groups themselves are worked out inside Gather; the assistant only interprets the request. This runs on a paid API, which does not use what is submitted to train models.
- Groq— the AI helper behind three things. When you ask the Bible study helper a question, your question is sent. When someone posts in a church’s bug report and feature request thread, that post is sent to be sorted. And when you press and hold a message in any chat (a group chat, a one-to-one conversation, a prayer thread or a reading-plan chat), the text of that one message is sent so the app can suggest a few short replies that fit it; no names and no other messages go with it. This includes children’s groups and children’s accounts.
- Relay and Stripe— handle each church’s subscription invoices and payments. They receive the church’s billing contact and payment details; nothing about members.
- Your browser’s dictation — if you speak instead of typing, your browser does that, not Gather. Depending on which browser you use, that audio may be processed by Apple or Google under their terms.
Children’s privacy
Gather is intended for members of the church and their families under the oversight of a parent or guardian. If a child uses the app, a parent or guardian is responsible for their use and can manage or remove their account. If you believe a child has provided information without appropriate consent, contact us and we will remove it.
A child’s account is always a member or a regular attender of the church, never a guest. Invitations and requests that concern a child are sent to their parent.
A church leader can put a child on a serving schedule, such as helping run the sound desk on Sundays. The child’s name then appears on that schedule for the members who can see it, and reminders of the child’s turns go to their parent as well as to the child. A child cannot sign themselves up to serve.
A child’s conversations can be read by their parent or guardian from the parent’s own account. Group chats set up for the children (all the kids, the boys, or the girls) can be opened and read by any adult member of the church, so that they are never unsupervised; adults cannot post in them. Children cannot see the adults’ group chats. Calls in children’s groups cannot be recorded.
Data retention and deletion
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account yourself at any time, from inside the app: Profile → Delete my account. You do not need to ask anyone. A church administrator can also remove an account.
Deleting your account permanently removes your name, photo, email address, phone number and home address; every message you sent, whether private or in a group conversation, including the copies held for the people on the other side; your calls; your prayer requests; your Bible notes, highlights, memory verses and reading progress; your favorites on the More tab; your notification settings and any device registered for notifications; and your sign-ups, so those dates open back up for someone else. Your sign-in is deleted, so you will not be able to sign in again.
What remains, and why.Requests for help you raised on the Care Board remain, because others may have already offered to help. A recording of a call you were on remains in that conversation, because it belongs to the conversation, not to any one person in it; you can ask a church leader to remove it. If you reported someone to a church leader, that report is kept so the leaders still have a record of it. Free text written by other people that happens to mention your name — a household name, for instance — is not something we can find automatically, and a church leader can edit it on request.
Security
We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections and secure authentication. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your data safe.
Your choices
- Edit or remove your profile information from within the app.
- Turn notifications on or off in your device and app settings.
- Request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data by emailing jared.griffin@gmail.com.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by the “Last updated” date above.
Contact us
Questions about this policy or your data? Email jared.griffin@gmail.com.