This page explains what happens to your information when you use the Christ Church, Georgetown website, gtchrist.church.
No cookies, no tracking
This website sets no cookies and loads no third-party scripts, fonts, images, videos, maps or trackers. Everything you see on these pages, including the photographs, is served from this website itself. There are no advertisements and no analytics services.
If your browser supports it, the site keeps a copy of pages you have visited on your own device, so they still open when you are offline. That copy stays on your device; you can clear it in your browser settings at any time.
Two other things are kept only in your own browser, never sent to us: a draft of a form you are filling in (until you send it or press "Clear my draft"), and, if you use the AI helper, your conversation with it in the current browser tab (until you close the tab or press "Start over").
Server logs
Like almost every website, the server keeps a log of requests: the time, the page requested, the referring page, the browser's user-agent string, and a shortened network address (the last part of the IP address is removed before anything is written, so the log cannot point to one connection). The log is used only to count visits and to stop abuse, is never shared or sold, and is deleted after 30 days. The legal basis under the GDPR is legitimate interest in running and securing the site.
The hosting proxy in front of this site (measured 2026-10-26): successful requests are not logged there. Requests that fail at the proxy are recorded with the visitor's IP address and browser user-agent, with cookies and authorization headers redacted, and are currently kept until the proxy is restarted. A retention limit for those records is under review.
Forms
The forms in Connect send your answers to the parish by email. The website itself does not store them: there is no database, and the form service does not write submissions to disk or to its logs (it logs only which form was used, the time and whether sending worked). Each submission becomes one email to the parish. While a submission is being checked, your network address is held in memory only, in a scrambled form that changes every day, to stop the forms being misused for spam; it is never written down.
- My Membership Covenant & Action Plan collects your name, email and (optionally) phone, and your answers to the covenant's questions about worship, service, formation, giving and support. It goes to the parish office. Some answers, about your faith and church life, are religious information, which data-protection law treats as sensitive: please only write what you are happy for the parish staff and clergy to read.
- Prayer request collects your name, the request, who it is for (a first name is enough), who may see it, and optional contact details. It goes to the clergy. Prayer requests are sensitive: if you choose "Clergy only", it is kept with the clergy; if you choose the prayer list, only the first name is shared with it.
- Ministry and group interest collects the ministries and groups you choose, your message, name, email, optional phone and how you would like to be contacted. It goes to the parish office.
- Organizational giving collects your organization's name, type and website, your name, role, email and optional phone, and what you would like to give. It goes to the parish office. This form never takes payments.
Once the email reaches the parish, it is handled like any other email to the parish office or clergy. If the website cannot send a form, it offers to open your own email app with your answers filled in instead, and you choose whether to send it.
Optional AI helper
If you use the parish helper (the "Ask the parish helper" button), the text you type is sent from our server to an AI model (Gemma, by Google, released under the Apache 2.0 licence) that runs on servers operated by this website's operator. It travels over an encrypted connection through Cloudflare, our network provider. It is not sent to any third-party AI company. Your text is used only to produce the answer you asked for, together with today's date, the address of the page you are on and the last few questions and answers of your current conversation. Your text and the answer are not written to disk or to any log on the way. The model server may hold recent requests in memory for a short time to speed up repeats; that is lost on restart. The service that runs the model keeps request metadata (time, timing, status and size; no IP address) for up to 13 months, and a one-way fingerprint of your last message, used to count repeated requests, in aggregate statistics with no set expiry. Your text cannot be read back from the fingerprint. To enforce fair-use limits, your IP address is kept in memory only, in a scrambled form that changes every day, and is never written to disk. The AI's answers can be wrong. They are not verified facts: check the calendar or ask the parish office. Please don't type personal or confidential details into it; for pastoral matters, contact the clergy directly.
Links to other services
Some things the parish offers online are run by other companies, and this website only links to them. When you follow one of these links you leave this website, and that service's own privacy policy applies:
- Giving, pledges and the member directory use Realm (onrealm.org). This website never sees or handles your payment details.
- The parish calendar, event requests and work orders use eSPACE (app.espace.cool).
- The weekly email newsletter uses Emma (e2ma.net).
- The mission funding application, and the parish's older prayer request form, use Google Forms.
- Livestreams and recordings are on YouTube; the parish also posts on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
When you write to a parish address (for example info@gtchrist.church), your message goes to the parish office or the person you wrote to, and is used only to answer you and for parish purposes.
Questions
Contact the parish office: (202) 333-6677, info@gtchrist.church, 3116 O Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007.
If this ever changes, this page will say so before it happens.