Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 2026
1. Who we are
Ev Church (Auckland Evangelical Church Trust) is a community of Christ-followers across Auckland. We value the trust you place in us when you share personal information. This policy explains how we look after that information when you visit our website, come along to church or take part in our ministries and activities.
Providing personal information is generally voluntary. If you do not provide information we need, we may be unable to respond to a request, register you for an activity, provide pastoral support or process a gift.
2. Information we collect
Depending on how you engage with us, we may collect:
Your name, contact details, account identity and communication preferences
Information you provide for events, groups, serving and other church activities
Prayer requests, pastoral-care information and other ministry information
Giving information such as the amount, fund, frequency, start date, giver reference and payment status
Messages, feedback, privacy requests and complaints
Technical and usage information such as page visits, device and browser details, approximate location, session identifiers and error information
3. How we use information
We use personal information to:
Provide church activities, pastoral care and member services
Communicate about services, events, groups and ministries
Process and reconcile gifts and manage recurring giving instructions
Operate, secure, monitor and improve our website and systems
Respond to enquiries, feedback, privacy requests and complaints
Meet our accounting, safeguarding and other legal obligations
4. Service providers and overseas processing
We do not sell or rent personal information. We use service providers to operate our church and website. Information is shared only where needed for the relevant service. The locations below describe where information is primarily stored or processed based on our current configuration and each provider’s published information. Our main providers include:
Provider | How we use it | Primary data location |
|---|---|---|
Email, calendars, forms and document storage used in church administration and ministry. | Globally distributed | |
Church relationship and ministry records, including groups, serving and communication history. | Australia (hosted by Ev Church in Azure Australia East) | |
Cloud infrastructure used to host Rock RMS and its related data and services. | Australia (Australia East) | |
Cloud infrastructure and storage used by Ev Church systems. | Australia (Sydney) | |
Delivery of transactional and ministry email generated through Rock RMS. | United States | |
Newsletters and other optional email communications, including subscription preferences. | United States, with some processing in other countries | |
Delivery of website feedback notifications to authorised Ev Church staff. | United States | |
Hosting for the Ev Church website, application services and databases. | United States (US West) | |
Authentication and secure sign-in for member and administrative website accounts. | United States | |
Measurement of general use and performance on non-sensitive public website pages. | Globally distributed | |
Campus maps, ratings and publicly submitted Google reviews displayed on campus pages. | Globally distributed | |
Website analytics, feature rollouts, error diagnosis and eligible session replays. | United States | |
Website uptime monitoring, operational logging and investigation of service errors. | United States | |
Existing online giving services integrated with Rock RMS. | Not publicly specified by the provider | |
Card-payment processing used by Simple Donation. | Globally distributed, including the United States | |
Open-banking authorisation and setup of one-off or recurring bank payments. | AWS data centres; country not publicly specified by BlinkPay |
Some providers may store or process information outside New Zealand. We select providers with appropriate privacy and security arrangements and remain responsible for information processed on our behalf. Some providers may also process information under their own privacy terms when performing independent functions such as payment processing.
5. Giving and payments
We use your name and contact details to identify you and associate your giving with the appropriate church relationship record. We retain the gift and provider information needed for receipts, reconciliation, recurring instructions and accounting.
Payment providers and your bank handle card details, online-banking credentials and bank authentication as applicable. Ev Church does not receive or store your online-banking password or full card details.
6. Analytics, cookies and monitoring
Google Analytics measures general use of non-sensitive public pages. It is disabled on sensitive journeys such as sign-in, member, giving, contact and pastoral-care pages.
Google Maps Platform displays campus maps and may load public rating and review data from Google when you view a campus page. Google processes these requests under its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
PostHog helps us understand website use, diagnose errors, manage feature rollouts and review eligible session replays. Form-control values are masked, and PostHog capture is paused while the giving experience is open. When you are signed in, approved analytics may be associated with your member identity so we can provide and support the appropriate experience.
Better Stack helps us monitor service health and investigate operational errors. We limit logs to information needed to operate and secure our services and do not intentionally log form contents, bank credentials or full card details.
These services may use cookies or similar browser storage to recognise a session, remember settings and measure website use.
7. Security
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, loss or destruction. These include access controls, multi-factor authentication, encryption in transit and at rest, secure providers, monitoring and backups. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure.
8. Retention
We retain personal information only for as long as needed for its purpose and our legal obligations. Donation and accounting records are generally retained for at least seven years. Temporary and test records are deleted or anonymised when no longer needed. Some church relationship, pastoral, safeguarding, dispute or legal-hold records may need to be kept longer.
9. Your rights and complaints
You may:
Ask to access the personal information we hold about you
Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete
Ask us to delete information where we are not required to retain it
Unsubscribe from optional email communications
Raise a privacy question or complaint with us
If we cannot resolve a privacy complaint, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
10. Changes and contact
We may update this policy when our practices, providers or legal obligations change. We will publish the current version and revision date on this page.
To exercise your rights or ask a privacy question, please use our contact page.