Privacy Policy

Discipleship Connect · Version 1.0 · Effective 12 June 2026

Please read before you sign up

1. Who we are and how to contact us

Discipleship Connect (the “Platform”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is operated by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME] (ABN [ABN]) of [REGISTERED/PRINCIPAL ADDRESS, QLD]. We are responsible for this Platform and for the personal information we handle in operating it, and we are committed to handling it in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”).

Privacy enquiries, requests and complaints:

• Privacy Officer: [PRIVACY OFFICER NAME / ROLE]
• Email: [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL]
• Post: [POSTAL ADDRESS]

Please contact us first about any privacy concern — see Section 14 for how we handle complaints and your right to escalate to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”).

2. About Discipleship Connect, and how churches fit in

Discipleship Connect is a private, invitation-based application that helps a church connect disciplers (mentors) with disciplees (mentees) under the oversight of that church's leadership. It is not a public social network, and there is no open or free-text messaging by design.

Your church uses Discipleship Connect to coordinate and provide pastoral oversight of discipling relationships within its own community. Your church's leaders and administrators (“church leadership”) can see certain information about your participation, as described in this policy and as you are told when you sign up and when you log a catch-up.

Two organisations may handle your personal information: (a) us — we operate the Platform and the systems that store and process your information, both for our own purposes (running, securing and improving the Platform) and on behalf of, and under arrangements with, your church; and (b) your church — a separate organisation that exercises pastoral oversight through the Platform and is responsible for how its leadership uses the information it can see. Your church may also have its own privacy policy governing its other systems. This policy covers the Platform; it does not replace your church's own policy.

3. What personal information we collect

We collect only the information needed to run the Platform and to enable your church's pastoral oversight.

Identity and account information (sourced from your church's Planning Center directory and/or confirmed by you at sign-in): your name; email address; date of birth (used only to confirm you meet the minimum age — see Section 11 — and not displayed to others); gender (used to apply your church's same-gender matching policy, and shown on your profile); suburb / locality; profile photo where available; identifiers linking your account to your church's Planning Center record; the method you used to sign in; your account status; and whether you hold administrator permissions.

Profile information you provide: for disciplers, what you offer and your expectations, focus areas, life stage, preferred meeting format, time commitment, capacity, and optionally a nominated endorser; for disciplees, the focus areas you are seeking, life stage, preferences, availability and preferred meeting format.

Connection, scheduling and meeting information: connection requests (and a short note you may add) and their lifecycle; meeting proposals and confirmed meetings, including an optional location or link.

Catch-up logs: a short, structured record of a meeting — whether it occurred, the date, duration, whether you prayed, who attended, a one-tap indication of how it went, the topics discussed, a short shared “next step” note, and whether a follow-up has been requested. Section 6 explains who can see these.

Safeguarding and oversight information: concern reports you submit (including a free-text description, the category, and optionally who or which relationship the concern is about), which are confidential to church leadership; oversight signals the Platform derives (for example, a relationship that has had no logged meeting for several weeks); and audit records of significant and safeguarding-relevant actions, including who acted and when.

Technical, log and device information: standard server and security logs (such as request times and coarse abuse-prevention signals); and error and performance diagnostics captured by our error-monitoring provider. Where an IP address is used for abuse prevention, we do not retain it in the Platform's application records in identifiable form.

Sensitive information: some information we handle is “sensitive information” under the Privacy Act. In particular, because Discipleship Connect is a Christian discipleship platform operated for a church, your use of it can reveal your religious beliefs or affiliation; and catch-up logs and concern reports may touch on your wellbeing. By creating an account and using the Platform, you consent to us collecting, using and disclosing this sensitive information for the purposes described in this policy. You can withdraw this consent by closing your account (Section 10.4).

What we do not collect: we do not host free-text private messaging (there is no chat function); we do not collect payment information from members (the Platform is free to members); and when we synchronise with Planning Center we deliberately do not pull fields such as medical/health notes, background-check data, payment identifiers or household financial information.

4. How we collect your information

• From your church's Planning Center directory — we synchronise the limited identity fields above when you sign in and on an ongoing basis. Planning Center is the authoritative source for that identity information; the Platform keeps a copy to operate efficiently (see Section 8 for the cross-border aspects).
• Directly from you — your profile, connection requests, meeting proposals, catch-up logs and concern reports.
• Automatically — technical, log and diagnostic information as you use the Platform.
• A concern report is collected only when you choose to raise one; it is routed only to your church's leadership and is not shown to the person it concerns.

If you do not provide information we need (for example, a valid email, or the identity match that confirms you belong to a participating church), we may be unable to create or maintain your account.

5. Catch-up logs and leadership visibility

• A catch-up log is a shared record, not a private journal.
• Each catch-up log is visible to both participants in the relationship and to your church's leadership. The short “next step” note is shared with the other participant.
• The rhythm of your relationship (for example, when you last met) is visible to both participants and to leadership.
• Leadership can see this so they can provide pastoral oversight and care — for example, noticing a relationship that has gone quiet, or a follow-up that was requested.
• Because there is no private chat, sensitive matters are raised through “Raise a concern”, which goes to leadership only and is not visible to the other participant.

6. Who we share your information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not disclose it for third-party advertising. We disclose it only as set out below.

Your church and its leadership can see the oversight information described in this policy (your profile, your connections and their status, your catch-up logs, the rhythm of your relationships, and any concern reports relevant to your church). Leadership of one church cannot see members or data of another church.

Other members: a discipler's approved profile is visible to disciplees in the same church for discovery; a disciplee's profile is not browsable by other disciplees and becomes visible to a discipler only once there is a connection between you; within an active connection the two participants can see each other's relevant profile information and shared catch-up logs.

Our service providers (sub-processors):

Authorities and legal disclosures: we may access, use, retain and disclose your information where we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with a law, court order or lawful request; to establish or respond to a legal claim or protect our rights; to prevent or address a serious and imminent threat to the life, health or safety of any individual or to public health or safety; or to investigate or prevent fraud or security issues. Mandatory reporting of safeguarding concerns is the responsibility of your church, not the Platform; we do not undertake to make mandatory reports on a church's behalf, but we reserve the right to disclose information to authorities as described.

Business transfers: if we restructure or sell or transfer all or part of our business, your information may be disclosed to the relevant party, who will be required to handle it consistently with this policy.

7. Overseas disclosure (cross-border) — APP 8

The Platform's primary database and files are stored in the Australian (Sydney) region. However, some providers, and your church's Planning Center system, are located overseas, principally in the United States. Your church's identity information originates in, and synchronises with, Planning Center (United States), so identity information is transmitted to and from the United States; Planning Center's own privacy terms govern its systems ([LINK TO PCO PRIVACY POLICY]). Vercel, Resend, Sentry and GitHub may process limited information in the United States or on global networks.

Before disclosing your personal information to an overseas recipient, we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient handles it consistently with the APPs, including through contractual protections. By using the Platform you acknowledge these overseas disclosures.

8. How we protect your information

We take reasonable steps to protect your information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, including:

• Database-level access controls (row-level security): every record is scoped to your church and enforced at the database layer, so one church cannot reach another church's data.
• Least-privilege design: changes to data go through controlled server-side functions that re-check permissions.
• Encryption in transit (HTTPS) and at rest for stored data.
• Secure secret storage in a dedicated vault.
• Private file storage served only through time-limited signed links.
• Signature-verified integrations for incoming Planning Center data.
• An append-only audit trail of significant and safeguarding-relevant actions.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We comply with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under Part IIIC of the Privacy Act: if a data breach involving your personal information is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the OAIC as required by law.

9. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, or as required by law, and then take reasonable steps to delete or de-identify it.

10. Your rights and choices

Access and correction: you can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete. Much of your information is visible in the app, and you can export your data yourself from the Data & Privacy screen. Because your identity information is sourced from Planning Center, some corrections are made by updating your record with your church / in Planning Center. We respond within a reasonable time and within the timeframes the Privacy Act requires; we do not charge to make a request, though we may charge a reasonable, pre-notified cost-based fee for access involving significant work. If we refuse, we will tell you why and how to complain.

Deletion: you can request deletion of your account and personal information from the Data & Privacy screen or by contacting our Privacy Officer. Deletion is a request actioned by your church's leadership and/or us, not an instant, fully-automatic erasure, because some records must be retained — the audit trail and concern reports (see Section 9) are kept for accountability and the safety of the community, even after your profile is removed, and catch-up logs within the safeguarding retention period are likewise retained. We will tell you what has been deleted and what has been retained, and why.

Withdrawing consent: you consent to our handling of your sensitive information by using the Platform, and may withdraw that consent at any time by closing your account; once you do you can no longer use the Platform, but the retention rules above still apply.

Communications: service emails (such as connection requests, meeting reminders and safeguarding alerts) are part of the Platform's core function and are not marketing. You can control optional notification categories in your settings, but some safeguarding and account-critical notifications cannot be switched off while your account is open. We do not send marketing emails without your consent, and any marketing will contain an unsubscribe facility, consistent with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth).

11. Children and minors

Discipleship Connect is for adults (18 years and over), or such higher minimum age as your church sets. We do not knowingly create accounts for, or collect personal information from, minors. Our sign-in process blocks anyone recorded as a child, or under the minimum age, from creating an account. If we become aware that we hold a minor's personal information in error, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

12. Cookies and analytics

The Platform uses only the cookies and local storage necessary to keep you signed in and to operate securely. We do not use third-party advertising trackers, and we do not sell or share data for advertising. Our error-monitoring provider (Sentry) collects diagnostic information to help us fix faults; we do not enable session-replay recording of your activity.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a material change we will take reasonable steps to notify you — for example, by an in-app notice or email — and, where appropriate, ask you to re-confirm your acceptance before you continue to use the Platform. The current version is always available within the Platform and on this page; the effective date above shows when the latest version took effect.

14. Complaints and how to escalate

If you are concerned about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer (Section 1). We will acknowledge your complaint promptly and aim to resolve it within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC): www.oaic.gov.au; 1300 363 992; GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001.

15. Governing law

This policy and any privacy complaint are governed by the laws of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia.