Privacy

Effective November 4, 2026. Above Soulutions, LLC, Franklin, Tennessee.

Above Church is the app a church uses for its bulletin, its website, its members’ app and its office. A church’s people trust it with names, addresses and prayer requests. This page says plainly what we keep, who can see it, who helps us run it, and what you can do about it.

The short version

• We never sell anyone’s information, and there are no ads in Above Church.
• Prayer requests, messages and their pictures, notes of encouragement, who gave and how much, and the answers to a form that only its reviewers read (like a teacher application) are encrypted by the app before they’re saved. No Above Church screen shows them, and they can’t be read from our database.
• Each church is walled off from every other church. One church can never see another’s people.
• Inside a church, people see only what their church lets them see.
• We use a few companies to run the app, listed below. They may use what we send them only to do that job.
• A member can have a copy of what their church holds about them emailed to them, and can leave the church in the app.
• A church sees how its website and app are used as totals, not who opened what. The weekly email is different: the office can see who opened it (below).

Who is in charge of what

Your church decides what it keeps about its people and who in the church may see it. It enters most of it in Back Office, and members add some themselves. Above Church (Above Soulutions, LLC) keeps that information safe and runs the app for the church. We use it only to run Above Church for that church, and to help when the church asks us to.

If you have a question about what your church keeps about you, ask your church office first. They can see and change it. You can also write to us (below).

What we keep

About the people of a church

• Contact and household: names, email, phone numbers, home address, household, and who is in it.
• Church life: birthday and anniversary, baptism and membership dates, leadership roles, the ways someone helps (involvement), when they serve, and Care Meals sign-ups.
• Photos the church or the person adds.
• What members write: prayer requests and messages in Prayer and Messages, notes of encouragement, About you (what someone does and enjoys), and what they type into the church’s forms. Prayer requests, messages, their replies and pictures, and notes of encouragement are encrypted before they’re saved, and so are the answers to a form that only its reviewers read, which are never emailed (see Keeping it safe).
• Choices: what the church directory shows about someone, and how they want to be told about new posts.
• Giving, where a church takes gifts through Above Church: who gave, how much, to which fund and when. Who gave and how much are encrypted before they’re saved. Card and bank details go straight to Stripe and are never stored by Above Church.
• Leaders’ website profiles: a bio and, if they choose, an email for the public. These are shown on the church’s public website.

When a church sends its weekly email

• If your church sends a weekly email, your church office can see when you opened it and which links in it you chose. The email says so at the bottom. Some mail apps open every email by themselves, so this isn’t always exact.
• This is kept for 400 days, then cleared. You can stop the email with Unsubscribe at its bottom, or on Notifications in your church’s app.

Counting visits to your church’s website and app

• Each church’s website counts its visits: which of its pages are seen, how visitors came (a search, a social site, the church’s weekly email, another website, or typed in), whether on a phone, tablet or computer, and how often Watch live is tapped. It keeps nothing that says who you are: no name, no home address, and no IP address (the number your internet connection uses).
• To count each visitor once a week, and to tell a first visit from a return visit, the website leaves a small mark on your phone or computer. It is a cookie holding a random number and the day it was made, and nothing about you. It lasts 400 days from your last visit. You can block it in your browser’s settings or use a private window; the website works the same without it, and you are simply counted as new. The mark is never sold, shared or used for ads. The website keeps a scrambled copy of that number for the week, to count you once, and deletes it after Saturday night. After you choose a link in the church’s weekly email, it also leaves a short note for ten minutes, so that visit counts as from the email.
• The church’s app notes which of its parts you open each day, such as Prayer or Giving (never which request, post or gift), and whether you opened it from the app’s icon on your phone or computer. That note has your name on it, and it is kept only for the week. After Saturday night, the week’s totals are saved and the note is deleted, usually within a day. No screen shows it, your church’s or ours. Your church sees only the totals.

About signing in

• Your email address, and when you signed in. Your church’s Church Admins can see when you last signed in. If you turn on two-step sign-in, what it needs to check your code.
• To stop someone guessing at sign-in codes, a scrambled form of your internet address, kept for a short time.
• To show what’s new, when you last looked at Prayer and at Messages, and which posts you have opened. It is used only to mark what’s new for you.
• For each phone or computer where you turn on notifications, the address its browser gives us to send them to.

When something goes wrong

• If you send a report from a church’s App check page, the details of your phone’s browser and what went wrong. We delete these after 90 days.
• Our servers keep short technical logs (for example, that a page failed to load) to keep the app working. We write them so they don’t hold anyone’s prayer requests or messages.

On abovechurch.com

• If you ask for a walkthrough, what you type in the form is emailed to us. It is not stored in the app.
• We count page visits on abovechurch.com with Vercel’s analytics, which don’t use cookies and don’t follow you to other sites.

Who can see it

• Your church’s office, each person only in the parts of Back Office their church has given them permission for (People, Bulletins, Giving and so on). Giving records open only to people the church names for giving.
• Your church’s members, who see the church directory, and only what each person has allowed it to show. A Prayer and Messages post is seen by the people in its Group, and the Members Group is the whole church. A prayer request can go to the Church Admins and the elders only, if the writer chooses. A youth ministry’s Group can also be read by its young people’s parents.
• Anyone, on the church’s public website: only what the church puts there, such as service times, events, its leaders and their profiles.
• Above Church’s support staff, only to help a church that asks, or to keep the app safe and working. Changes we make for a church are recorded in that church’s Audit Log, which its Church Admins can read. Prayer requests, messages and their pictures, notes of encouragement, and who gave and how much are not on any of our screens.

Altus, the office assistant

Altus helps the people who run a church’s Back Office: it answers questions about how to use Above Church and looks things up in the church’s own records. Altus is off unless we turn it on for a church and one of that church’s Church Admins agrees to it on Altus’s first screen.

When someone in Back Office asks Altus a question, we send it to Anthropic, the company that makes the AI behind Altus, so it can answer. We also send what Altus reads from the church’s records to answer it, such as events, names in People, the prayer list or the website’s pages, and, in a church’s first 30 days, the files the office gives Altus to bring in: the church’s current website, an old bulletin, or its member list. Altus can read only what the person asking may see in Back Office. Members never use Altus, and it doesn’t read Prayer and Messages, with one exception. Where a church turns on Build with Altus for its bulletin, a member can tick OK to print in the Sunday bulletin on a prayer request. A request ticked that way is unlocked and sent to Anthropic, so Altus can suggest gentler words for the bulletin’s prayer list. Nothing prints until someone in the office confirms it.

Anthropic does not use this information to train its AI, and keeps it only for a limited time under its business terms, including to catch misuse of its service. When Altus is off at a church, nothing from that church is sent to Anthropic.

Each person’s conversations with Altus are their own. No one else at the church, and no one at Above Church, reads them. We keep them for 30 days, then delete them, and a person can delete them sooner. We keep a count of each question’s size and cost, never its words, to manage each church’s allowance.

Companies that help us run Above Church

Each may use what we send it only to do its job for us.

Cookies

Above Church uses cookies to keep you signed in and to remember a few choices, such as which church you last opened (and, for our own staff, to sign them out after a time away). A church’s website also leaves the visit mark described above, and a short note for ten minutes after you choose a link in its weekly email. Stripe’s payment box, and a map or video a church adds to its pages, may set their own cookies under their own rules. Above Church sets no advertising cookies, and none of ours follow you to other websites.

What you can do

• See what your church holds about you: on Your profile, tap Email me what the church holds about me.
• Change it: change your own details on Your profile, or ask your church office.
• Choose what the directory shows: on Your profile, you can leave the directory, or hide your phone, email, address or dates.
• Leave: on Your profile, Remove me from this church ends your sign-in there and clears what you wrote in About you. Your church’s office keeps its own record of you, as a church keeps a membership list; ask them if you want it removed.
• Notifications: turn them off, or choose email or phone, on Your profile.

How long we keep it

We keep a church’s information while the church uses Above Church, and its people’s while the church keeps them. Some things are deleted sooner: App check reports after 90 days, Altus conversations after 30 days. Form entries stay until the church deletes them. The visit mark ends 400 days after your last visit. Each week, after Saturday night, the app saves the week’s totals, then deletes its note of which parts each member opened and the website’s scrambled list of that week’s visitors.

When a church stops using Above Church, we give it a copy of its information if it asks (its Church Admins download it on Export), then delete it 90 days later. Only a record of what was changed and when stays, with no names or words in it. Our backups of it are gone within 30 days after that.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels over encrypted connections and is stored encrypted.

If someone gets into a church’s information who shouldn’t, we tell its Church Admins as soon as we know, and what we’re doing about it.

The app also encrypts prayer requests, messages, their replies and pictures, notes of encouragement, who gave and how much, and the answers to a form that only its reviewers read, with a key made for each church that we keep apart from the database. No Above Church screen shows them, and they can’t be read from our database. Only the app unlocks them, and only for the people your church gives access to. A change to who has access is recorded: a new Church Admin or Giving permission in your church’s Audit Log, and someone added to a Group other than Members on that Group’s page, which tells its members. The emails a member chooses to get about posts carry the words, and our email service keeps a copy of each. Stripe keeps its own record of each gift.

Each church’s information is kept apart by the database itself, not only by the app’s screens. Anyone can turn on two-step sign-in, which asks for a code from their phone as well. We test changes to who can see what before they go live.

Children

A church may keep records of children in its families, such as a name and birthday, as it does on paper. Teens 13 and over may have their own sign-in when their church gives them one, and then see what their church shows its members. Your church doesn’t give a sign-in to anyone it knows is under 13, and children have no About you.

Changes to this page

If we change what this page says in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top and tell churches’ Church Admins before it takes effect.

Questions

Write to us at admin@abovesoulutions.com. Above Soulutions, LLC.