Terms of Service

Who We Are, and What Agreeing Means

The Sunday Thread is a product of The Sunday Thread LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company ("we," "us"). These Terms of Service are an agreement between you and The Sunday Thread LLC. By creating an account or using the platform, you accept them, together with our Privacy Policy.

If you are a pastor or church administrator subscribing on behalf of a church, your church's subscription is additionally governed by the Church Subscription Agreement provided at signup. If these terms and that agreement ever conflict for a church account, the Church Subscription Agreement controls.

The Service

The Sunday Thread transforms a pastor's Sunday sermon into daily devotional content — in adult, teen, and kids versions — delivered to congregation members through the week by app notification or email, with additional delivery formats as they become available. It also provides pastors with anonymous congregation questions, prayer and encouragement features, engagement insights, and a weekly briefing.

Content is generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence from the sermon your church uploads, and is reviewed and published under your church's control.

Your Account

• You must be 13 or older to hold an account.
• If you are between 13 and 17, you may use The Sunday Thread only with the permission of a parent or guardian.
• Every account belongs to one person. Keep your password private, and tell us right away if you believe your account has been compromised.
• Give us accurate information, and keep your delivery preferences up to date so content reaches you.
• We may suspend or close accounts that violate these terms or put other members at risk.

Church Subscriptions and Billing

Church subscriptions begin with a 30-day free period — no card required. After that, pricing is based on the number of active members in your congregation, with a built-in grace buffer so a growing church is never surprised by a tier change. Current pricing is published at thesundaythread.org.

Subscriptions renew automatically each billing period — monthly or annually, whichever your church chose — until cancelled. Payments are processed by Stripe. A church may cancel at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period; fees already paid are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Full billing mechanics for church accounts are set out in the Church Subscription Agreement.

Sermons and Your Content

Your sermons belong to you. When a church uploads sermon recordings, transcripts, or notes, the church keeps every right it has in that material. The church grants The Sunday Thread LLC a limited, non-exclusive license to process that material for the purpose of operating the service — generating, storing, and delivering devotional content to that church's congregation.

Member submissions — questions, prayers, and encouragements — are stripped of identity before storage, as described in the Privacy Policy. We do not sell your content, and we do not use your sermons to train AI models for use outside your church's account without your express written consent.

If you submit feedback or suggestions about the platform, we may use them to improve the product without obligation to you.

Anonymity, Safety, and What We Are Not

Anonymous means anonymous: your pastor sees questions and encouragements without knowing who wrote them, and we cannot de-anonymize a submission for anyone. The one exception is described at signup — if something you share signals that you or someone else may be in danger, the platform shows you immediate help resources and lets your pastor know that someone in the church is hurting, without revealing who. Sharing your identity is always your choice.

The Sunday Thread is not a crisis service. The platform's urgency detection is an AI-assisted tool that helps surface submissions that may deserve pastoral attention. It is not counseling, mental health care, crisis intervention, or a substitute for professional help of any kind. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911. For mental health crisis support, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7). For help with child abuse, call the Childhelp National Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

Text Message Program

If text message delivery is available and you choose it, you agree to receive automated daily devotional text messages from your church through The Sunday Thread at the number you provide. Consent to receive texts is not a condition of purchasing or using any service.

• Message frequency varies — typically one message per day, Monday through Saturday.
• Message and data rates may apply.
• Reply STOP at any time to cancel. Reply HELP for help, or email hello@thesundaythread.org.
• Mobile carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
• No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third parties, except as required to deliver the messages themselves.

Our SMS provider is Twilio. See the Privacy Policy for how phone numbers are handled.

Acceptable Use

• Don't use the platform for anything unlawful, or to harass, threaten, or harm anyone.
• Don't upload content you don't have the right to share.
• Don't attempt to identify the author of an anonymous submission, probe or circumvent our security, or scrape the platform — including collecting platform content to train AI models.
• Don't misrepresent who you are or what church you belong to.

Copyright Complaints

Churches are responsible for having the rights to the material they upload — including any quoted lyrics, readings, or other third-party content inside a sermon. If you believe content on the platform infringes your copyright, email hello@thesundaythread.org with a description of the work you own, where the material appears, and your contact information. We review every notice and remove infringing material where appropriate.

Our Platform

The Sunday Thread platform — its software, design, and brand — belongs to The Sunday Thread LLC and is protected by intellectual property law. These terms don't transfer any of it to you beyond the right to use the service as intended while your account is in good standing.

Disclaimers

The platform is provided "as is" and "as available." We work hard to keep it reliable, but we can't promise it will always be uninterrupted or error-free, and we don't guarantee any particular spiritual, pastoral, or engagement outcome.

Devotional content is generated from your church's sermon and published under your church's review. It is teaching material, not professional advice of any kind.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, The Sunday Thread LLC will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of your use of the platform. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount your church paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose — or one hundred dollars, if you have paid nothing.

Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You agree to be responsible for your own use of the platform: if a claim against The Sunday Thread LLC arises from content you uploaded without the rights to it, or from your violation of these terms, you will cover the resulting costs and damages to the extent the law allows.

Ending Things

You can stop using the platform and delete your account at any time from your profile — deletion removes your data as described in the Privacy Policy. A church can cancel its subscription at any time, effective at the end of the billing period. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, with notice where reasonable.

Governing Law and Changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Minnesota.

If we make material changes to these terms, we will notify church account holders by email at least 14 days before the changes take effect. Continued use after that date is acceptance of the updated terms. The effective date above reflects the current version.

The Fine Print

• If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.
• These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and (for churches) the Church Subscription Agreement, are the whole agreement between us about the platform.
• You may not transfer your account or this agreement to someone else; we may assign this agreement in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of the business.
• If we don't enforce a part of these terms right away, we haven't given up the right to enforce it later.
• Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond reasonable control.
• The platform may link to third-party sites and resources; we are not responsible for their content or practices.

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