This policy explains what personal information Ilagan Christian Church collects through this website and the Ilagan Christian Church app for Android, how we use it, who can see it, and what you can ask us to do with it.
Effective date: November 2, 2026
Who we are
Ilagan Christian Church (“the church”, “we”) is a local church at Purok 5, Bliss Village, City of Ilagan, Isabela, Philippines. We run ilaganchristianchurch.com and the Ilagan Christian Church app, which opens the same website inside an Android app. This policy covers both. We are the personal information controller for the information described here under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173).
You can reach us, including our data protection officer, through the contact page or by email at ilaganchristianchurchofficial@gmail.com.
What we collect
If you visit without signing in
We collect only what you choose to send us. The contact form asks for your name, email address, an optional phone number and your message. The prayer request form asks for your name, a way to reach you, the request itself and who you are happy for it to be shared with. We don’t use analytics or advertising trackers, and we don’t keep your IP address. To stop spam and repeated sign-in attempts, the site briefly keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address that can’t be turned back into the address. It expires within a day.
If you are a member with an account
Accounts are created by the church office for members of the congregation. You can’t sign up on your own. Your account and profile can hold:
- your name, email address, phone number and home address;
- your birthday, gender, civil status, occupation and blood type;
- a headshot photo, if you upload one;
- church records such as your membership, baptism and wedding dates, and the ministries you serve in;
- the relatives you add to your profile (see Children and family members below);
- when you last signed in and whether you are currently online, which other members see as a small dot in Messages.
We also keep what you create while signed in: messages you send to other members, journal and course answers, Bible highlights and notes, bookmarks, poll votes, serving availability, articles you write, questions and feedback you send to a ministry, and prayer requests. When you or a church leader changes something on the site, we keep a record of who changed what and when, but not the old or new values.
If you use the Android app
The app shows the website, so everything above applies. In addition, when you sign in on a phone we store:
- a sign-in key for that phone, kept encrypted on the phone and scrambled (hashed) on our server;
- the phone’s make and model, so you can tell your devices apart;
- when the phone was first and last used;
- a push notification token from Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, if you allow notifications.
A phone that hasn’t opened the app for 90 days is signed out and its record is deleted. The app asks for two permissions only: internet access and, on Android 13 and later, permission to show notifications. Read-aloud uses the voices already on your phone, so the text it reads is not sent anywhere. The app has no analytics or crash-reporting software.
Children and family members
We keep information about the children of our members. All of it is provided by their parents or guardians. When you add a family member to your profile, you confirm that you are their parent or legal guardian (or, for an adult relative, that you have their permission), and you consent, for yourself and for them, to the church collecting and using that information as this policy describes.
For each relative you can record their name, birthday, relationship to you, gender, contact details, church dates and a photo. A parent manages a child’s record until the child turns 15. Children’s details never appear in the member directory and are visible only to church leaders and administrators. If a relative has their own email address, the church office may create an account for them, which they then manage themselves.
The Kids’ Ministry keeps its own enrollment and attendance records for children who attend on Saturdays: the child’s name, birthday and gender, a parent or guardian’s name and contact details, any notes the parent gives us (for example allergies), attendance and class points. A parent or guardian gives consent when enrolling the child. These records are seen only by the ministry’s teachers and church leaders.
The app and the members area are meant for adult members and for young people the church office gives an account to. They are not directed at young children, and we don’t knowingly collect information directly from a child under 13. If you think a child has given us information without a parent’s knowledge, contact us and we will delete it.
How we use it
We use your information to care for the congregation and run the church: to contact you, to list you in the member directory, to organise ministries and serving rosters, to send you church notices and message notifications, to keep the church’s records of membership, baptism and marriage, to answer your messages and prayer requests, and to keep the site secure. We don’t sell personal information, we don’t show advertising, and we don’t use your information for anything unrelated to the life of the church.
Who can see it
Nothing in a member profile is public. Inside the church:
- Other signed-in members see the directory: your name, headshot, phone number, address, birthday and wedding date.
- Ministry heads, elders and pastors also see your middle name, gender, civil status, occupation, blood type, and membership and baptism dates, and the children on your profile.
- Church administrators see everything, so they can keep the records and approve changes.
- Messages are seen only by the people in the conversation.
- Journal answers are seen only by you and church administrators. Your ministry head sees whether you answered, not what you wrote.
- Prayer requests go to the pastors, and further only as far as you chose on the form.
Service providers
We use a few outside services to run the site and the app. Each one receives only what it needs.
- Namecheap (EasyWP) hosts the website and its database.
- Google (Gmail) sends the site’s emails, such as password resets and form notifications.
- Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) delivers push notifications to the app. A message notification shows only the sender’s name, never the message itself. A church notice shows its title and a short summary.
- Google (Gemini) powers the church assistant chat, the Bible topic search and the translation of sermons and lessons. What you type into the assistant is sent to Google to get an answer. When a signed-in member uses the assistant, it may also send the directory details it needs to answer questions about the congregation, such as names, phone numbers, addresses, and birthdays without the year. Anything that includes member information is sent only through the church’s paid Gemini account, under terms that do not let Google use it to train or improve its products. This information stays private. It is used only to answer the question asked on this site, it is not published or made available anywhere outside the site, and only the person who asked sees the answer. The assistant’s conversation is kept in your own browser and is cleared when you sign out. We don’t store it on our server.
- Crossway (the ESV Bible) supplies Bible text. Only the Bible reference or search words are sent.
- YouTube and Facebook play sermon and announcement videos. A video loads from their servers when you play it, and their own privacy policies apply.
- Gravatar may supply a default picture for a member who hasn’t uploaded a headshot.
Some of these providers process information outside the Philippines. We use them under their published terms and choose settings that limit what they receive.
Community rules and reporting
Members can write to each other and post articles, so we ask everyone to treat others the way Scripture asks us to (Ephesians 4:29; Colossians 4:6). Harassment, bullying, threats, sexual or offensive content, spam, scams, selling, and pretending to be someone else are not allowed.
If someone breaks these rules, open your conversation with them and choose Report. Only church administrators see reports, and the person is not told who reported them. The last messages of that conversation are sent with the report so the administrators can understand what happened. They read every report and decide what to do. That can include removing the member and deleting their account. You can also contact the church office directly.
Cookies and storage on your device
The site sets cookies only to keep you signed in. It also saves a few settings in your browser so the site remembers them, such as your Bible version, reading speed, where you left off in a book, and the assistant’s conversation. None of these are used for tracking, and you can clear them in your browser at any time.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and what you created on the site while you are a member. When an account is deleted, its profile, relatives, messages in one-to-one conversations, journal and course answers, notes, highlights and serving records are deleted with it. Messages you sent in group conversations stay in those conversations, and articles or sermons you wrote stay on the site under your name unless you ask us to remove them. Church registers of membership, baptism and marriage are kept by the church office as part of the church’s history. Contact and prayer messages are kept until the church office clears them, and you can ask us to delete yours at any time. Phones signed in to the app are removed after 90 days without use.
How we protect it
The site is served only over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Every profile field has a fixed audience, sign-in attempts are limited, member data is closed to anyone not signed in, and changes to records are logged. No system is perfectly secure, so if we learn of a breach that affects your information we will tell you and the National Privacy Commission as the law requires.
Your rights
Under the Data Privacy Act you have the right to be informed, to access the information we hold about you, to object, to have it corrected, to have it erased or blocked, to receive a copy of it, and to claim damages. You can change most of your profile yourself in the profile editor. For anything else, contact us and we will reply within 30 days. If you think we have mishandled your information, you can also complain to the National Privacy Commission at privacy.gov.ph.
Deleting your account
You can ask for your account and its data to be deleted at any time, from the website or the app:
- Sign in and open the profile editor.
- At the bottom of the page, choose Delete my account, confirm, and send the request.
You are hidden from the directory as soon as you send the request, and a church administrator deletes the account within 30 days. If you can’t sign in, send us a message through the contact page or email us from the address on your account, and we will do it for you. What is deleted and what the church keeps is listed under How long we keep it. Deleting your account also deletes the relatives recorded on your profile. A relative who has an account of their own can ask for it to be deleted the same way.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top and, for an important change, tell members through the site’s notices.