Acceptable use

Trellis exists so that a church can care for its people. This policy says how Trellis may and may not be used. It is part of the terms of use, and it applies to the church and to everyone who signs in; the church and you mean what they mean there. Where this policy and another Trellis policy differ, the stricter rule applies. Until it takes effect, the rules on using Trellis that the terms and the security policy held before November 6, 2026 still apply.

Use it lawfully

Use Trellis for the church’s own work, and only as the law allows. Don’t use it for fraud, to launder money, to get around sanctions, or to help anyone else break the law.

People’s information

• Use names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, notes, attendance, giving and serving records to do the church’s work, and for nothing else. No marketing for yourself, no personal business, no sharing outside the church’s staff and the leaders who need it.
• Don’t copy rosters, notes, prayer requests, giving records or volunteer lists into other apps, spreadsheets, group chats or screenshots beyond what the work needs week to week. If you must, delete the copy when it has served its purpose.
• Write about people the way you would if they were reading over your shoulder. Notes are pastoral records, not private diaries, and other leaders and the church staff can read them.
• Record only what helps you care for someone. Don’t enter information a person wouldn’t expect the church to hold.
• Don’t record government ID numbers such as Social Security numbers, full card or bank account numbers, passwords, or medical records. A short fact Trellis asks for to keep someone safe, such as a child’s allergy, is fine.

Accounts and access

• Sign in only with your own email. Don’t let anyone else use your sign-in link, code or password, and don’t sign in on someone else’s behalf.
• The church is responsible for the people it invites and for what they do in Trellis. Give each person only the roles their work needs, and remove access when someone steps away.
• Don’t try to see groups, people, gifts or areas you haven’t been given access to.

What you put in

• When you add a person, a note, a file, a plan or a message, you confirm you have the right to share it and that it isn’t unlawful, hateful or harmful.
• Don’t use Trellis to harass, threaten or demean anyone, to pretend to be another person or organization, or to publish someone’s private details without their permission.
• Upload only song charts, lyrics, recordings, photos and documents you have the right to use. Songs follow the church’s own licenses.
• If you think something in Trellis infringes your copyright, write to support@trellischurch.app with the work, where it appears and how to reach you. Trellis removes it, or asks the church to.

Children

• Children’s details, in households, Registration and Check-in, are for their care and safety and for running the church’s programs. Use them for nothing else, and share them only with the people the church has given that work.
• Follow the church’s own child-safety policy. Trellis helps a church check children in; it doesn’t replace the church’s safeguarding.
• Don’t use what Trellis holds about a child to contact them outside the church’s own programs.
• Trellis keeps no photos of children on their records. Upload a photo that shows a child, such as a group’s header picture or a file, only with a parent’s or guardian’s permission.
• Never upload, store or send sexual content involving a child. Trellis removes it, closes the sign-in of whoever put it there, may close the church’s account, and reports it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as the law requires.

Messages the church sends

• Send only to people who expect to hear from the church: members, guests who gave their address, and people who signed up. No purchased, rented or scraped lists, and no unsolicited mail.
• Say who a message is from, keep subject lines honest, and say truthfully what an appeal for money is for. Don’t send phishing, chain letters, or links to harmful sites.
• If someone asks the church to stop emailing them in any way other than the unsubscribe link, stop within 7 days. The link itself works at once.
• If a church’s email draws unusual numbers of spam reports or bounces, Trellis may slow or pause its sending while the church cleans its lists.

Giving

• Gifts are received by the church. Collecting for missions or a benevolence fund is fine, as the church receives the gift and says where it goes; don’t use Giving or Registration to take payments for another organization or for a business.
• No raffles, lotteries, sweepstakes or other games of chance through Giving or Registration.
• No card testing, no gifts made with someone else’s card or account without their permission, and no false information to Stripe.

Silas, Ask Silas and Lighthouse

Trellis’s AI features run on Anthropic’s Claude.

• Use them for the church’s work. Everyone who uses them also follows Anthropic’s Usage Policy.
• AI can be wrong. Check what Silas drafts and what Ask Silas answers before you rely on it. What Silas proposes for the church’s records stays a draft until a person keeps it.
• A person decides. Never decide anything about someone’s care, membership, discipline, employment or safety on Silas’s or Lighthouse’s word alone, and don’t use them for medical, legal, financial or mental-health advice or assessment.
• Don’t try to make them ignore their rules, reveal what they weren’t given, or reach another church’s information, and don’t use them for work that has nothing to do with the church.
• Give them only what you have the right to share.
• Before you give Silas a guide you bought or licensed, check that its terms allow it.
• If an answer is wrong or harmful, say so with the buttons under an Ask Silas answer, or at support@trellischurch.app.

Bringing information in

• Import or upload only information the church may hold and that people gave it expecting it to be kept, such as the church’s own records from another system, sign-up sheets or prayer cards. No purchased or scraped lists, and nothing taken from another service against its terms.
• If someone asked the church to stop contacting them, or to delete what it holds about them, keep to that when you import.

The service itself

• Don’t probe, scan or test Trellis’s security, put unusual load on it, or interfere with it. Good-faith security research, reported as the security policy describes under Reporting a problem, isn’t a breach of this policy.
• Don’t use bots or scripts to sign in to Trellis or to read or copy from it, apart from the downloads and exports Trellis provides.
• Don’t upload viruses or other harmful code.
• Don’t get around Trellis’s limits, such as the emails a month, Silas’s readings or Groups’ free 25 people, and don’t open more than one account to do it.
• Don’t resell Trellis, offer it under another name, or use it to build a competing product.

Other companies’ rules

Some parts run on other companies’ services, and their rules apply too: Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement for Giving and paid sign-ups, Resend’s acceptable use policy for email, and Anthropic’s Usage Policy for Silas, Ask Silas and Lighthouse. Trellis may have to act when one of them asks it to.

What Trellis does when something is wrong

Trellis looks into what is reported to it and what it finds. When something breaks this policy, Trellis takes the smallest step that puts it right, where it can:

1. It tells the church’s administrators what is wrong and how to fix it.
2. It removes the content, or pauses only what is being misused: one person’s sign-in, a sender, Silas and Lighthouse, Giving, or a public page.
3. If the problem isn’t put right, or comes back, it may suspend or close the account under the terms.

Trellis may act at once, before telling the church, for sexual content involving a child, an attack on Trellis or on another church, spam, danger to someone, a legal order, or a demand from Stripe, Resend or Anthropic. It tells the administrators afterwards unless the law forbids it. Trellis keeps the records it needs and shares them with the authorities where the law requires.

While anything is paused, the church’s administrators can still download all of the church’s records. A church that thinks Trellis got it wrong can write to support@trellischurch.app, and a person looks again.

Reporting misuse

Anyone can report misuse of Trellis (a member, a parent, another church, a researcher) to support@trellischurch.app. Say what you saw and where. A person reads every report. Security problems follow the security policy. If a child is in danger, call 911 first; child sexual abuse material can also be reported to the CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and each church’s administrators are told by email. The current version is always at this address.