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ChurchPathways Acceptable Use Policy

Effective date: 22 July 2026

Last updated: 22 July 2026

1. Purpose and scope

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) protects participants, church leaders, Church Customers, ChurchPathways and the wider public. It applies to every person who accesses or uses ChurchPathways, including demonstrations, trials, free plans, paid workspaces, APIs, forms, emails and support channels.

This AUP forms part of the ChurchPathways Terms of Service. A Church Customer is responsible for ensuring that its authorised users understand and follow it.

2. Core principles

ChurchPathways must be used in a way that is:

  • lawful;
  • respectful of dignity, privacy and confidentiality;
  • proportionate to a genuine discipleship or ministry purpose;
  • consistent with safeguarding responsibilities;
  • secure and limited to authorised access; and
  • honest about what the Service can and cannot show.

ChurchPathways is designed to strengthen human discipleship and pastoral follow-up, not to replace relationships, spiritual discernment or professional safeguarding practice.

3. Permitted use

Subject to the Terms and the relevant plan, ChurchPathways may be used for adult church and ministry activities such as:

  • new-believer and baptism pathways;
  • new-member and belonging journeys;
  • prayer, Bible-study and spiritual-formation pathways;
  • volunteer, mentor and leader training;
  • small-group and ministry-team development;
  • marriage or pre-marital classes that are educational rather than therapeutic;
  • church classes, cohorts and learning programmes; and
  • related follow-up and engagement administration.

The Service is currently for adults aged 18 and over unless ChurchPathways expressly agrees otherwise in writing.

4. Privacy and reflection boundaries

Users must respect the difference between private reflections and deliberately shared thoughts.

You must not:

  • pressure, manipulate or require a participant to share a reflection that the product allows them to keep private;
  • attempt to bypass permissions or reveal private reflections;
  • misrepresent who can see information;
  • access participant data out of curiosity or without a ministry need;
  • copy, screenshot, download or share sensitive content outside the authorised team unless lawful and necessary;
  • discuss a participant's information in public, informal or insecure channels;
  • retaliate against a participant for keeping a reflection private, withdrawing consent, raising a concern or exercising a data right; or
  • use sensitive content for publicity, testimony, fundraising, marketing or case studies without a valid lawful basis and clear permission.

Authorised leaders must write responses and notes that are factual, relevant, respectful and suitable for potential disclosure.

5. Safeguarding and emergency use

5.1 Church responsibility

Each Church Customer must maintain its own safeguarding policy, designated safeguarding contact, reporting routes, training and incident records. ChurchPathways is a technology provider, not the church's safeguarding authority.

5.2 No emergency or crisis reporting

Do not use ChurchPathways as the only or primary method to report:

  • immediate danger;
  • suspected abuse or exploitation;
  • a missing person;
  • suicidal intent or serious self-harm risk;
  • urgent medical or mental-health need;
  • criminal activity requiring immediate action; or
  • any matter requiring emergency or statutory intervention.

The Service is not continuously monitored and does not guarantee a response. In a UK emergency, call 999 or 112 and follow the church's safeguarding procedure.

5.3 High-risk pathways

Without separate written approval and safeguards, do not use ChurchPathways for pathways whose primary purpose is:

  • counselling or psychotherapy;
  • crisis intervention;
  • suicide or self-harm management;
  • abuse-recovery casework;
  • trauma treatment;
  • addiction treatment;
  • medical diagnosis or treatment; or
  • managing active safeguarding investigations.

5.4 Handling disclosures

Leaders who encounter a concern must follow their church's safeguarding policy and report it to the appropriate safeguarding lead or statutory service. They must not promise absolute secrecy, conduct an unauthorised investigation, confront an alleged perpetrator, or use ChurchPathways notes as a substitute for required safeguarding records.

6. No misuse of spiritual or engagement data

Progress, completion, shared-thought activity and dashboard indicators are engagement signals, not measurements of faith or spiritual maturity.

You must not use ChurchPathways data as the sole or determinative basis to:

  • judge a person's relationship with God;
  • shame, rank or publicly compare participants;
  • deny membership, sacraments, ministry access or pastoral care;
  • make employment, volunteer, disciplinary or safeguarding decisions;
  • label a person spiritually weak, rebellious or unsafe; or
  • pressure participants to complete content merely to improve metrics.

Significant decisions require appropriate human judgement, context, conversation and lawful process.

7. Prohibited content and conduct

You must not upload, create, send, store or share content that:

  • is illegal or facilitates illegal activity;
  • threatens, harasses, bullies, humiliates or unlawfully discriminates against a person;
  • sexually exploits or endangers any person;
  • depicts or promotes child sexual abuse or exploitation;
  • encourages suicide, self-harm, eating-disorder harm or dangerous challenges;
  • promotes terrorism, violent extremism or credible threats of violence;
  • is pornographic or sexually explicit without a lawful, necessary and separately approved safeguarding context;
  • contains malicious code, phishing, credential theft, fraud or deceptive impersonation;
  • unlawfully reveals personal, confidential or special-category data;
  • infringes copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other rights;
  • deliberately spreads materially false information likely to cause serious harm;
  • is spam, bulk unsolicited messaging or an unauthorised commercial promotion; or
  • is otherwise likely to expose a participant, church or ChurchPathways to serious harm.

This does not prevent a participant from honestly describing a difficult experience in a relevant reflection. Leaders must handle such content with care, confidentiality and the church's safeguarding procedures.

8. Security and technical restrictions

You must not:

  • access or attempt to access another church's workspace or another person's account without authorisation;
  • probe, scan, test or exploit vulnerabilities without our prior written permission;
  • interfere with the Service, overload it, evade rate limits or launch denial-of-service activity;
  • introduce viruses, malware, destructive code or automated attacks;
  • scrape, harvest or bulk-export data except through authorised product features for a legitimate church purpose;
  • use bots or automation that create unreasonable load or bypass controls;
  • share accounts, magic links, passwords, tokens or secret keys;
  • reverse engineer or attempt to obtain source code except where law expressly permits;
  • falsify headers, identities, church affiliation or account information;
  • evade plan limits through duplicate accounts or workspaces; or
  • use ChurchPathways data to train an artificial-intelligence model without express written permission and a lawful basis.

Responsible security concerns should be reported to support@churchpathways.com. Do not publicly disclose a vulnerability before we have had a reasonable opportunity to address it.

9. Accounts, invitations and authority

A Church Customer must invite only people it is authorised to contact and must provide an accurate explanation of why they are being invited.

You must not:

  • impersonate a church, leader or participant;
  • create a workspace for an organisation without authority;
  • invite people using unlawfully obtained lists;
  • repeatedly contact people who have declined or opted out;
  • register another person without their knowledge; or
  • allow a user to retain access after their role or ministry need ends.

10. Content ownership and third-party resources

Only upload or link content you have the right to use. This includes Bible translations, books, videos, music, images, logos, course materials and training resources.

You must comply with licence terms, attribution requirements and any restrictions on reproduction or public display. Do not remove rights-management information or present another person's work as your own.

11. Communications

ChurchPathways communications must not be used for spam, harassment, fundraising abuse, political campaigning unrelated to the church's disclosed purpose, or marketing that breaches PECR or data protection law.

Service notifications should contain only the sensitive detail necessary. Do not place confidential reflection text in an email subject line or other insecure preview area.

12. Data minimisation and retention

Church Customers and leaders must collect only information genuinely needed for the pathway and follow-up purpose.

Do not:

  • ask intrusive questions merely because the platform permits free text;
  • retain participant data indefinitely without review;
  • duplicate sensitive information across unnecessary notes or systems;
  • upload full counselling, medical, criminal or safeguarding files; or
  • use internal notes as an unstructured repository for rumours or opinions.

Church Customers must establish and follow a retention and deletion schedule and action legitimate correction, deletion and access requests.

13. Children and adults at risk

The standard Service is for adults aged 18 and over. No Church Customer may use it for children without a separate written agreement and appropriate age assurance, parental or other permissions, privacy design, safeguarding controls and risk assessment.

Where an adult may be at risk, the Church Customer must apply its safeguarding policy, use trained leaders, limit access and avoid treating the platform as a professional care-management system.

14. Reporting concerns

Report suspected breaches of this AUP, security incidents or harmful content to support@churchpathways.com. Include the church, account, relevant date and enough detail for us to assess the issue, but do not send unnecessary sensitive information by ordinary email.

For an urgent safeguarding matter, use the church's safeguarding route or the appropriate statutory or emergency service rather than waiting for ChurchPathways support.

15. Investigation and enforcement

We may investigate suspected misuse and may:

  • request information from the Church Customer;
  • preserve relevant records;
  • remove or restrict content;
  • limit a feature or role;
  • suspend or terminate an account or workspace;
  • block invitations, emails or automated activity;
  • notify the Church Customer's authorised contact;
  • report unlawful activity or serious risk to an appropriate authority; and
  • cooperate with lawful investigations.

We will consider context, severity, repetition, harm, intent and whether prompt corrective action was taken. We may act immediately where delay could create risk.

We do not undertake to proactively monitor every reflection, shared thought or pathway. Failure to detect content does not mean it is permitted.

16. Appeals

A Church Customer may ask us to review an enforcement decision by emailing support@churchpathways.com within 14 days and explaining why the decision should be changed. We may maintain restrictions while the review is pending where necessary for safety, security or legal compliance.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this AUP to address new risks, legal requirements or product features. Material changes will be notified through the website, email or the Service.

18. Contact

ChurchPathways CHURCHPATHWAYS LTD 128 City Road, London, UK, EC1V 2NX Email: support@churchpathways.com