Privacy Policy
     Mentor Baptist Church (MBC) has several basic groups of people that might be listed or referred to; staff, adult members, youth and missionaries. Information of concern includes names, email addresses, phone numbers and photos. Home addresses are never posted.

          1. For staff, we list names, email addresses (usually office emails), and office phone              numbers. No home phones, etc. It is important that people be able to contact the staff and that access is all through the office.

          2. For adult members, we often list names when they are a contact for some group or activity that we are covering on the website. We do not list email addresses unless they have specifically given permission (they often ask us). We do not list phone numbers. It is assumed that other members have the church directory or can call the office for phone numbers.

          3. For youth and children, we generally do not list full names, but at most the first name and initial of the last name. We also do not list email addresses or phone numbers. Photo captions do not include full names and often do not include names at all. This is more to protect them from the more dangerous types of people that can and do use the net to contact and take advantage of young people. We are currently trying to decide how to apply this policy to the guestbook for the youth group.

          4. For missionaries, we are very careful what, if anything, we list. Sometimes, missionaries are in countries where they would be in danger if it were known that they are 'missionaries' or even Christian. In some countries, it is actually illegal to be there as a Christian missionary and they could be imprisoned or deported. We don't post info, even names, emails or country, without the explicit permission of that missionary or from our staff person in charge of missions.

     Some specific areas of our online functionality have additional guidelines.

          1. MBC has a printed member and ministry directory with names, addresses, email, etc which is only available to members and friends of MBC. It is periodically distributed in print at the church. To request a copy or to add your information to this directory contact the office. This directory is not available online.

          2. Our MBC Email Prayer Chain has additional concerns since sensitive information is often shared. The specific policies and procedures we follow are documented there.

          3. When using photos of MBC events, members, etc online, either directly on the website or in our photo albums we use the following guidelines.

                    o Including photos in our site is a privilege for us, and we intend to respect.            

                    o Photos are almost always of people in public spaces, at public events.

                    o We try not to post anything that would be embarrassing, objectionable or hurtful to  

                             anyone in the photo.

                         o Applying other parts of our general privacy policy, we don't put full names of

                       children or youth as captions with photos, and we minimize how often we use full

                       names of adults.

                         o We will gladly provide credit for who took a particular photo if desired by the

                             photographer, and we would certainly honor any copyright wishes or restrictions.

                         o We will gladly remove any photo immediately upon request. In any case, if you see a

                       photo that includes you or your child and would like it removed from the site, we

                       would be glad to do so. Just notify the webmaster with the details. Please be aware,

                       that while we never post home addresses, there are a number of websites that

                       provide white pages, or extensive listings of mailing addresses. There are also a

                       number of people-finder type sites that help in locating people and their names,

                       phone numbers, email addresses, etc. These sites have many sources of data and

                       you can probably assume that you're in there somewhere.


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