BE Church Privacy Statement

Your privacy is important to BE Church. This privacy statement provides information about the personal information that Bathurst Evangelical Church (“BE Church”, “BEC”, “us”, “we”, “our”) collects, and the ways in which we use that personal information.

Personal information collection

BE Church may collect and use the following kinds of personal information:

personal contact details (name, address, mobile number, etc)
information about your use of our online tools, which will herein refer to our website
information that you provide us for the purpose of registering with, publishing on and subscribing to the online tools (including photographs and personal contact information)
information that you provide to BE Church, including any communications that you send to us, for purposes such as registering for an event, becoming a member, or serving in various church-related roles
information relating to your attendance at church events

How we collect your information

We may collect information from you either directly or from third parties, through both formal and informal means.

We collect information in the following ways:

Electronically through our online tools
from forms such as the membership application form and visitor book
at church events such as services and group meetings
during telephone calls and face to face contact with our members
from social media and email communication

All information collected on forms is considered confidential. Information may be entered into computer by the pastoral team and system administrators. Hard copies of forms will be stored in a lockable cabinet and shredded prior to disposal.

Using personal information

BE Church collects information about people for the purposes of communicating to them, sharing the gospel with them, involving them in our church community, providing them with Christian services and informing them of what we do as an organisation.

Specifically, BE Church may use your personal information to:

personalise the online tools for you
enable your access to and use of the website and church services
enable you to serve in various roles of the church community
send you communications, invitations, notifications and newsletters

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information, and can be adjusted using privacy controls on the website. You can choose to unsubscribe to email notifications at any time by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link on any notification you have received from us or via the contact form on our website.

Bulk mail to the majority of the church will be approved by the pastoral team before sending. Unsolicited mail to all members or large groups is considered misuse of personal information. Mail sent to children (under the age of 15) will be sent care of parents/guardians.

We will request your consent before publishing photographs of you or your children.

Our church services may be recorded and uploaded to YouTube for purposes of spreading the Gospel and images of attendees is considered incidental with every effort may to protect peoples identities. Recordings are edited before upload to remove any personal detail considered inappropriate for general publication.

Disclosing personal information

We respect your information and will not use it for any other purposes than those outlined above. We will not sell, distribute, rent, licence, disclose, share or pass your personal information on to any third parties, other than those who are contracted to us to keep your information confidential. We will not disclose the information we collect to third parties without your express consent or unless it is required for us to do so by law.

Securing your data

BE Church will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, unauthorised access or alteration of your personal information.

BE Church stores all the personal information you provide on secure servers.

Computers have privacy functions and permissions which are set by the system administrator. Only authorised persons are permitted to access your details. Users will be restricted to information relevant to their ministry role.

You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential.

Accuracy and quality of personal information

We will take all such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that all information collected from you is kept accurate, up to date, complete and relevant. Information is regularly reviewed for that purpose. If you become aware that your personal information we hold is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete or misleading, please contact us at bel@bechurch.org.au.

Cookies and Third Party websites

To improve your experience on our site, we may use ‘cookies’. Cookies are an industry standard and most major web sites use them. A cookie is a small text file that our site may place on your computer hard drive as a tool to store information about your preferences. Cookies will not identify you personally. If you would prefer not to receive cookies, you can alter your security settings on your web browser to disable cookies or to warn you when cookies are being used. However, by disabling the cookie function in your web browser you may impede your ability to use parts of the Website.

Our website may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. When you go to other websites from here, we advise you to be aware and read their privacy policy.

Our website uses Google Analytics, a service which transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the United States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.

By using our website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner described in Google’s Privacy Policy and for the purposes set out above. You can opt out of Google Analytics if you disable or refuse the cookie, disable JavaScript, or use the opt-out service provided by Google.

Accessing your personal information

You may request access to personal information about you that we hold, and you may ask us to correct your personal information if you find that it is inaccurate, out-of-date or incomplete. All requests should be made in writing or via the contact form on our website. When you request access, we will need evidence of your identity before we can grant you access to information about you or change it.

In some cases, we will refuse to give you access to personal information we hold about you. This includes circumstances where giving you access would be unlawful or have an unreasonable impact on other people’s privacy or where we reasonably believe that giving access would pose a serious threat to the health and safety of an individual or the public. If we refuse to give you access we will provide you with reasons for our refusal.

You can contact us at be@bechurch.org.au, or send your request or complaint to Bathurst Evangelical Church Inc.

PO Box 1020, Bathurst NSW 2795. We undertake to respond within 30 days. If the request or complaint will take longer to resolve, we will provide you with a date by which we expect to respond.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your complaint or request for information, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner with your concern. Information about lodging a complaint is available on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s website http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints.

Updating this statement

We may review and update this policy by publishing a new version on our online tools. We will notify you of any significant changes to this policy and publish any changes to our online tools. You should check this page periodically to ensure that you are familiar with any changes.

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