Privacy Policy

General Statement

(Last modified: August 23, 2023)

This Privacy Policy (this “Privacy Policy”) sets forth how Forest Hill Church, Presbyterian (“FHC,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) collect and process personal information that we receive. This Privacy Policy applies to visitors to and users of this website and any other website maintained by us (collectively, our “Sites”), visitors to our office, congregants and worshipers, job applicants, third-party service providers, vendors and suppliers. If you provide personal information to FHC about any person other than yourself, it is your responsibility to ensure that the other person understands how such information will be used, including the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, before it is provided to us. If you provide us with such information, we are entitled to, and will, assume without confirmation that you have obtained such consent. By accessing or using our Sites, you signify that you have read, understood and agree to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Information we collect 

information you provide to us directly. We may collect personal information, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number and other contact details, when you contact or communicate with us or provide personal information to us when worshiping or otherwise attending the church and its property. If you enroll in Breeze, our congregant community service site, we may collect information about your interaction with FHC and its members, the fellowships and activities in which you participate, and your interactions with FHC and its people in general. If you visit our offices or telephone or teleconference any FHC employees, we may also collect personal information such as name, organization and other contact details; video images of you from CCTV footage (if in our offices) or via screen shots or electronic recordings of teleconferences; date and time of your visit to FHCs offices; and telephone numbers and voiceprints if telephone calls are recorded.

Information we receive from other parties. From time to time, we may receive information about you from persons other than you, including our customers, other users of our Sites, investors, data service providers, vendors and suppliers. This information may include information required to process payments, such as tax ID numbers and wire instruction details. We may combine this information with other information we collect from or about you.  In these cases, this Privacy Policy governs the handling of the combined information. We may also collect information about you that is publicly available.

Employment Information. When you apply for a job with us, we may receive information such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, current and post employers, job titles and other personal information you include in application documents, such as your resume.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

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

Use of personal information

Your personal information will be used:  (i) in order to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, (ii) because we need the information for reasons of substantial public interests, (iii) in order to comply with our obligations under contract, (iv) because we have a legitimate pastoral, congregational or spiritual interest in using it, (v) as otherwise permitted by law or (vi) for any other purposes we may describe when you provide the information, including for the following purposes (as applicable):

  • to respond to your questions and handle and resolve requests for pastoral or other service;
  • to perform research with respect to the usage of the Sites (applicable to Site visitors);
  • to operate, maintain and provide the features and functionalities of the Sites, including providing customer support and analytics from the Sites, or diagnose or fix technology problems (applicable to Site visitors);
  • to understand our visitors and customers, to tailor our interactions and communication and to analyze statistics and trends to make our Sites and products better and to develop new services or features;
  • to communicate with you about employment opportunities for which you’ve applied or to fill open job positions as part of a recruiting process (if applicable);
  • to maintain the security of our premises, personnel, assets, and systems and to manage access to our premises and our disaster recovery procedures (applicable to office visitors);
  • to pay you for your services (applicable to third-party service providers, vendors and suppliers);
  • in order to comply with our obligations in connection with record-keeping and accounting requirements;
  • to maintain and provide appropriate management of our relationship with you;
  • to exchange mail correspondence or documentation which may involve providing your contact details to couriers and service providers in charge of the delivery service;
  • to engage your services in the future (applicable to third-party service providers, vendors, suppliers and business contacts);
  • to contact you to set up meetings or phone calls between you and your FHC contact(s); and
  • to send you surveys and similar materials.

How we share and disclose your information

We do not sell your information or share it for the purposes of targeted marketing. We may share, and have shared, personal information we receive about you with the following categories of recipients:

  • FHC ministries, pastors, employees, volunteers, and advisors;
  • Prospective and existing third-party service providers, vendors, contractors and agents of FHC as part of normal business operations
  • Personnel employed by service providers generally may have access to your personal information for the purpose of performing duties for FHC but are prohibited from using such information for other purposes.

 FHC may also disclose your personal information (i) to particular parties, pursuant to your consent, (ii) to fulfill your instructions, (iii) to comply with applicable laws and regulations or the reasonable requests of law enforcement, (iv) to protect the security or integrity of our Sites, (v) to exercise or protect the rights, property or personal safety of FHC, our members, congregants, visitors or others or (vi) to fulfill other applicable requirements.

We may also share information with others in an aggregated or otherwise anonymized form that does not reasonably identify you directly as an individual.

Control over your information

Email communications preferences:  From time to time, we may send you emails regarding updates to our Sites, events, worship, ministry work, and the like. If you wish to unsubscribe from such emails, click the “unsubscribe” link provided in such communications. We make every effort to promptly process all unsubscribe requests. Please note that you may not opt out of service-related communications (e.g., account verification, transactional communications, changes/updates to features of the Sites, or technical or security notices).

Modifying or deleting your information:  If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying or deleting your information, you can contact us directly at office@fhcpresb.org. We may not be able to modify or delete your information in all circumstances.

Other rights you may have:  The rights described in this subsection are applicable to you only if you reside in a jurisdiction where the provision of such rights is required by the data protection and privacy laws and regulations of the governing regulatory authority. As such, where required by applicable law or regulation, you may ask FHC for a copy of your personal information, to correct it, to erase it or to transfer it to other organizations. You may also have rights to object to some processing and, where we have asked for your consent to process your personal information, to withdraw this consent.  In particular, you have rights to object to direct marketing at any time.

You should also be aware that these rights may be limited (for example, access to personal information may be denied if making the information available would reveal personal information about another person or if we are legally prevented from disclosing such information). In addition, FHC may be able to retain data even if you withdraw your consent if we can demonstrate that we have a legal requirement to process your personal information. If you do not provide personal information in circumstances in which we must collect and process such information in order to comply with applicable law or enter into and perform services under an agreement with you, we may not be able to enter into the agreement or provide services as contemplated by any agreement we have in place. If we are not able to fulfill a request you make because your rights are limited, we will inform you of the reasons why when responding.

Where applicable, if you are a California resident you may have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (the “CCPA”) in relation to “personal information” we have collected about you as defined in the CCPA. These rights are, to the extent required by the CCPA and subject to verification and any applicable exceptions:

Right to Know/Access:  You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of certain personal information about you as described below:

  • the specific pieces of personal information collected;
  • the categories of personal information collected;
  • the categories of sources from whom the personal information is collected;
  • the purpose for collecting the personal information; and
  • the categories of third parties with whom we have shared the personal information.

Right to Delete:  You have the right to request that we delete the personal information. To request your exercise of the rights described above, please submit a request to us by emailing us at [insert contact URL].

Freedom from Discrimination: You have the right to be free from unlawful discrimination for exercising any of the rights above. We will need to verify your identity prior to addressing your request. Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to personal information collected about you. To designate an authorized agent, the authorized agent must provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify that they have been authorized by you to act on their behalf.

Data safeguards

We care about the security of your information and employ physical, administrative and technological safeguards designed to preserve the integrity and security of all information collected through our Sites. However, no security system is impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee the security of our systems 100%. In the event that any information under our control is compromised as a result of a breach of security, we will take reasonable steps to investigate the situation and, where appropriate, notify those individuals whose information may have been compromised and take other steps, in accordance with any applicable laws and regulations.

Data retention

We will retain your personal information only for as long as we consider necessary in connection with the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, unless applicable law or regulations require or permit a longer retention period.  In addition, we may retain your personal information for the duration of any period necessary to establish, exercise or defend any legal rights. We may anonymize or aggregate personal information and store it indefinitely in order to analyze aggregate metrics and trends.

Information collected through tracking technologies 

To provide a personalized and high-quality experience for our users, we and our third-party partners may use various technologies that automatically record certain technical information from your browser or device when you visit or use our Sites, read our emails or otherwise engage with us. This information is typically collected through a variety of tracking technologies, including cookies, Web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, file information and similar technology (collectively, “tracking technologies”).

We and our third-party providers use these tracking technologies to automatically collect usage and device information, such as: Your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, platform type, device type, operating system, date and time stamp, a unique ID that allows us to uniquely identify your browser, mobile device or your account and other such information.

We also may collect information about the way you use our Sites. For example, the Website from which you came and the Website to which you are going when you leave our Sites, the pages you visit, the links you click, how frequently you access the Sites, whether you open emails or click the links contained in emails, whether you access the Sites from multiple devices and other actions you take on the Sites.

When you access our Sites from a mobile device, we may collect unique identification numbers associated with your device or our mobile application (including, for example, a UDID, Unique ID for Advertisers (or IDFA), Google AdID, or Windows Advertising ID), mobile carrier, device type, model and manufacturer, mobile device operating system brand and model, phone number, and depending on your mobile device settings, your geographical location data, including GPS coordinates (e.g., latitude or longitude) or similar information regarding the location of your mobile device, or we may be able to approximate a device’s location by analyzing other information, like an IP address.

We may collect analytics data, or use third-party analytics tools such as Google Analytics, to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Sites and to understand more about our users by monitoring aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our website.  You can learn more about Google’s practices at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners, and view its currently available opt-out options at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Some of this data may be used for advertising purposes. We may also work with third-party partners to employ technologies, including the application of statistical modeling tools, which permit us to recognize and contact you across multiple devices.

Do Not Track Signals:  Although we do our best to honor the privacy preferences of our users, we are unable to respond to Do Not Track signals set by your browser or mobile application at this time.

Managing Cookies and Flash Cookies

Managing Cookies and Flash Cookies:  If you would prefer not to accept cookies, most browsers will allow you to: (i) change your browser settings to notify you when you receive a cookie, which lets you choose whether or not to accept it, (ii) disable existing cookies or (iii) set your browser to automatically reject cookies. Please note that not accepting cookies may negatively impact your experience using the Sites, as some features and services on our Sites may not work properly. Depending on your mobile device and operating system, (a) you may not be able to delete or block all cookies, (b) you may not be able to block non-cookie technologies, and (c) these browser settings that block cookies may have no effect on such techniques. You may also set your email options to prevent the automatic downloading of images that may contain technologies that would allow us to know whether you have accessed our email and performed certain functions with it.

Our reference to any third party or their software or services is not an endorsement by us of such third party or their products and services, and we disclaim any liability for the use or operation of any third-party software or services.

Links to third-party websites

The Sites may contain links to and from third-party Websites of our business partners, advertisers and social media sites, and our users may post links to third-party Websites. Such links are provided for convenience only, and you access them at your own risk. If you follow a link to any of these Websites, please note that these Websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for their policies.  We strongly recommend that you read their privacy policies and terms and conditions of use to understand how they collect, use, and share information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content on the Websites of third party.

Children’s privacy

The Sites are not intended for or targeted towards, and we do not knowingly collect personal information via the Sites from children under the age of 13 years. If we learn we have collected or received personal information via the Sites about a child under the age of 13 years, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we may have any personal information from a child under the age of 13 years, please contact us at office@fhcpresb.org. We obtain and display images of minors only with their parent’s or guardian’s consent.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the Sites, please contact us at office@fhcpresb.org.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may modify or update this Privacy Policy from time to time, so you should review this page periodically. If we change the policy in a material manner, for example if we seek to use personal information in a materially different way than we had previously, we will let you know and update the ‘last modified’ date at the top of this page. Continuing to use our Sites after we publish changes to this Privacy Policy means that you are consenting to the changes.