Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 2026

Who We Are

Bishop Street Church of Christ is a congregation of the Churches of Christ located in Union City, Tennessee. Our website address is https://bishopstcoc.com. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information when you visit our website.

We are committed to being good stewards of the information you share with us, just as we strive to be good stewards in every area of our ministry.

What Personal Data We Collect and Why

Information You Provide Directly

When you interact with our website, you may voluntarily provide personal information, including:

  • Contact form submissions — Your name, email address, phone number, and message when you use our Contact page to reach out to us. This may include prayer requests or other personal messages.
  • Comments — If you leave a comment on our site, we collect the data shown in the comment form, including your name, email address, and website (optional), along with the comment itself

Information Collected Automatically

When you visit our website, certain information is collected automatically by our web server and the services our site uses:

  • Server logs — Your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URL, pages visited, and the date and time of your visit. These are standard web server logs maintained by our hosting provider.
  • Cookies — Small text files stored on your device that help our site function properly (see the Cookies section below for details)

Information We Do Not Collect

  • We do not collect financial or payment information on our website. All online donations are processed entirely by our third-party giving platform, and that transaction occurs on their secure servers — not ours.
  • We do not use any analytics tracking tools (such as Google Analytics) on our website at this time.
  • We do not knowingly collect personal information from children (see Children’s Privacy below).

Comments

If our site allows comments, when visitors leave a comment, we collect the data shown in the comment form, as well as the visitor’s IP address and browser user-agent string to help with spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies — small text files placed on your device — for the following purposes:

Essential WordPress Cookies

  • wordpress_test_cookie — Tests whether your browser accepts cookies
  • wordpress_logged_in_* — Identifies you as a logged-in user (administrators only on this site)
  • wp-settings-* — Preserves your WordPress dashboard preferences (administrators only)

If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies so you do not have to fill in your details again the next time you leave a comment. These cookies last for one year.

Third-Party Cookies

Some cookies may be set by third-party services embedded on our site:

  • YouTube — When you view a page with an embedded YouTube video, YouTube (Google) may set cookies such as VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE, YSC, and PREF for video playback functionality and analytics
  • Google Maps — When you view a page with an embedded Google Map, Google may set cookies related to map functionality
  • LiteSpeed Cache — Our caching system may set a _lscache_vary cookie to serve the correct cached version of pages to different types of visitors

Managing Cookies

You can control and delete cookies through your browser settings. Please be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of some features on our site. Most browsers allow you to:

  • View what cookies are stored and delete them individually
  • Block third-party cookies
  • Block all cookies from specific sites
  • Block all cookies from being set
  • Delete all cookies when you close your browser

Embedded Content from Other Websites

Pages on our site may include embedded content from other websites (such as YouTube videos and Google Maps). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if you visited those websites directly.

These third-party services may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction if you have an account and are logged in to that service.

Our site currently embeds content from:

  • YouTube — Sermon recordings and livestream videos on our Sermons page
  • Google Maps — A map showing our church location on our Contact page

Third-Party Services

Our website relies on the following third-party services. Each service has its own privacy policy governing how it handles your data:

Google Fonts

Our site loads web fonts (Playfair Display, Source Sans 3, Outfit, and Material Icons) from Google’s font servers. When your browser requests these fonts, Google receives your IP address. No cookies are set by this service, but the connection itself transmits standard request data.

WP Smush (Image Optimization)

We use WP Smush to optimize and compress images on our site for faster loading. When images are uploaded to our site, they may be sent to WPMU DEV’s servers for compression. Smush also strips EXIF metadata (such as GPS location, camera model, and date) from images, which helps protect the privacy of anyone whose photos are uploaded. If the Smush CDN feature is enabled, images may be served from WPMU DEV’s content delivery network.

LiteSpeed Cache and QUIC.cloud

We use LiteSpeed Cache to improve our site’s performance through page caching and optimization. This plugin may communicate with QUIC.cloud, a third-party CDN and optimization service provided by LiteSpeed Technologies. If image or page optimization through QUIC.cloud is enabled, your request data and site content may be processed by their servers.

The Events Calendar

We use The Events Calendar plugin to display church events, service schedules, and special programs on our site. This plugin stores and displays public event information such as event names, dates, times, descriptions, and venue details. No personal visitor data is collected by the plugin during normal browsing of the event calendar.

Breeze Church Management System (ChMS)

Our church uses Breeze ChMS for internal church management, including calendaring. Our website automatically imports public event information (event names, dates, times, locations, and descriptions) from Breeze via an iCal calendar feed. This is a one-way synchronization — our website retrieves public event data from Breeze, but no visitor data from our website is ever sent to Breeze. No personal member information (names, emails, phone numbers, or financial data) is transmitted through this calendar feed.

  • Privacy Policy: Visit breezechms.com for their current privacy policy

Contact Form Plugin

Our Contact page uses a form plugin (such as Contact Form 7 or WPForms) to allow you to send us a message. When you submit the contact form, the information you provide (name, email, phone number, and message) is sent to us via email and may be stored in our WordPress database depending on the specific plugin’s configuration.

Donation / Online Giving Platform

Our “Give / Donate” links direct you to an external third-party giving platform (such as Tithe.ly, Pushpay, or Church Center). When you click these links, you leave our website entirely. We do not process, store, or have access to your financial information. All donation transactions are handled directly by the giving platform under their own privacy policy and security measures.

Social Media Links

Our footer contains links to our presence on the following platforms:

These are simple outbound links that open in a new browser tab. We do not embed Facebook tracking pixels, social plugins, or any social media SDKs on our site. Clicking these links takes you to those platforms, where their respective privacy policies apply.

Hosting Provider

Our website is hosted by a third-party hosting provider that maintains standard web server logs (IP addresses, access times, pages requested, and browser information) as part of normal server operations. These logs are managed according to our hosting provider’s data retention policies.

How We Use Your Information

We use the personal information we collect for the following purposes:

  • Responding to your inquiries — When you reach out through our contact form, we use your information to reply to your message
  • Church communications — If you sign up for our email list or request to be contacted, we may send you church news, event updates, or other communications. You can opt out at any time.
  • Improving our website — We may review general traffic patterns (from server logs) to understand how visitors use our site and make improvements
  • Prayer ministry — If you submit a prayer request through our contact form, it may be shared with our designated prayer team members

We will never sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

Data Retention

We retain personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this policy:

  • Contact form submissions — Retained for as long as needed to respond to your inquiry and periodically reviewed for deletion
  • Comments — Retained indefinitely or until you request deletion
  • Server logs — Retained according to our hosting provider’s data retention policy (typically 30–90 days)
  • Event data — Public event information remains on the site while relevant and may be removed after events have passed
  • Donation records — We do not store donation data; records are maintained by the third-party giving platform in accordance with applicable tax and financial regulations

Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • Access — Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
  • Correction — Request that we correct any inaccurate personal data
  • Deletion — Request that we delete your personal data from our systems
  • Opt out — Unsubscribe from any email communications at any time
  • Data portability — For data you have provided to us, request it in a structured, commonly used format

If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obligated to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the information in the Contact Information section below. We will respond to your request within 30 days.

Where Your Data Is Sent

Your data may be transmitted to or processed by third-party services located outside your country of residence:

  • Google (Fonts, YouTube, Maps) — Servers located globally; governed by Google’s Privacy Policy
  • WPMU DEV (WP Smush) — Image optimization servers; governed by WPMU DEV’s privacy policy
  • QUIC.cloud (LiteSpeed Cache) — CDN and optimization servers; governed by QUIC.cloud’s privacy policy
  • Breeze ChMS — U.S.-based church management service; calendar data only
  • Hosting provider — Servers located per the provider’s infrastructure

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service (such as Akismet), which may process comments on servers outside your country.

Data Security

We take the security of your personal information seriously:

  • Our website uses SSL/HTTPS encryption to protect data transmitted between your browser and our server
  • We follow WordPress security best practices, including keeping WordPress core, themes, and plugins up to date
  • Administrative access to our site is protected by strong passwords and limited to authorized church staff
  • We use security plugins to monitor for unauthorized access and vulnerabilities
  • Uploaded images have EXIF metadata stripped automatically to remove embedded personal information such as GPS coordinates

While we take reasonable measures to protect your personal information, no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, but we are committed to protecting your data to the best of our ability.

Children’s Privacy

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children. Our website is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child has provided personal information to us through our website (such as via a contact form), please contact us immediately so we can take steps to remove that information from our systems.

For children’s ministry programs and events, any registration or personal information collection is handled through our church office directly and not through this website.

Policy Updates

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, the services we use, or applicable laws. When we make changes:

  • The “Last Updated” date at the top of this page will be revised
  • For significant changes, we may post a notice on our website’s homepage
  • Continued use of our website after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy

We encourage you to review this page periodically to stay informed about how we are protecting your information.

Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal data, please contact us:

Bishop Street Church of Christ
908 Bishop Street
Union City, TN 38261
Phone: (731) 885-7822
Email: techsupport@bishopstcoc.com

You may also visit our Contact page to send us a message directly.

This privacy policy is provided as a good-faith effort to inform visitors about our data practices. It does not constitute legal advice. For questions about legal compliance (including GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, or other data protection regulations), we recommend consulting a qualified legal professional.