Privacy Policy

Version 1.0 · Effective 1 September 2026
Published by Pinkster Protestante Kerk Kraaifontein t/a Christ Life Church

At Christ Life Church we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This policy (the "Policy") explains how we process personal information and what your rights are under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA").

Please read this Policy together with any other notice we may give you on specific occasions when we collect or process personal information about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your information.

1. Important information and who we are

1.1 Responsible Party

Pinkster Protestante Kerk Kraaifontein t/a Christ Life Church is the Responsible Party when engaging with you as a visitor to this website, as a member of our congregation, or as a visitor to our services and events. In this Policy we refer to ourselves as "Christ Life Church", "the Church", "we", "us" or "our".

We have appointed an Information Officer who is responsible for overseeing questions about this Policy. If you have any questions, including any request to exercise your rights, please contact the Information Officer using the details below.

1.2 Contact details

You have the right to complain at any time to the Information Regulator (see section 16). We would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns first, so please contact us before you approach the Regulator.

1.3 Changes to this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This version was last updated on the date shown at the top of this page. Any changes will be published on this page and take effect the moment they are published. It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current — please keep us informed if your details change.

1.4 Third-party links

Our website and social media pages may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control those third parties and are not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. The personal information we collect about you

Personal Information means information relating to an identifiable, living natural person, as defined in POPIA. It does not include information where your identity has been removed (anonymous data). We may process the following categories of personal information about you:

2.1 Aggregated data

We also use aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data — for example, the percentage of visitors who read a particular sermon page. Aggregated data is not personal information in law, because it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. If we ever combine aggregated data with your personal information so that it can identify you, we treat the combined data as personal information under this Policy.

2.2 Information you give us about someone else

If you give us information about another person — for example, when you submit a prayer request on their behalf, or register your child for an activity — it is your responsibility to obtain that person's consent (or, in the case of a child, to be the person legally competent to consent) before you give the information to us. On receiving it, we assume that the necessary consent has been obtained.

2.3 If you do not provide personal information

Where we need to collect personal information by law, or in order to provide something you have asked for, and you do not provide it, we may not be able to do what you have asked. For example, we cannot reply to a message sent through our contact form without an email address. We will tell you if this is the case at the time.

3. How your personal information is collected

3.1 Directly from you

You give us personal information directly when you:

• complete the contact form on this website;
• send us a prayer request;
• email, telephone, WhatsApp or message us on social media;
• complete a connection card, registration form or membership application at church;
• sign up for the Growth Track, a ministry, a life group, an event or an outreach;
• register your child for the Children's Ministry or Youth Ministry;
• give a tithe, offering or donation, or sponsor an outreach;
• volunteer to serve on a team;
• attend our services, meetings or events;
• give us feedback or ask for pastoral care.

3.2 Automatically, when you use this website

As you interact with our website, we automatically collect Technical Data and Usage Data about your device and browsing behaviour. We collect this information using cookies and similar technologies — see section 4.

3.3 From third parties

We may receive personal information about you from:

• Google — analytics and anti-spam data, through Google Analytics and Google reCAPTCHA;
• Payment providers — Payfast, SnapScan, Yoco and our bank, in relation to donations you make;
• Other members — for example, when a family member submits a prayer request on your behalf.

4. Cookies and website analytics

Cookies are small text files placed on your device by a website. They cannot read your hard drive or access your files, and they do not contain your name, contact details or financial information.

4.1 What this website uses

4.2 Your choice

We ask for your consent before Google Analytics stores any cookies or analytics identifiers on your device. Until you accept, analytics storage stays switched off. You can change your mind at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser, which will cause us to ask you again on your next visit.

You can also set your browser to refuse all or some cookies, or to alert you when a website tries to set one. How you do this depends on your browser. If you block cookies, some parts of this website may not work as intended.

5. How we use your personal information

We will only use your personal information within the framework of the law. Most commonly, we will use it in the following circumstances:

• where you have given us your consent;
• where it is necessary to provide the ministry and services that you (and your family) voluntarily take part in;
• where it is necessary to protect a legitimate interest of yours;
• where it is necessary for our legitimate interests as a church, and your interests and rights do not override those interests;
• where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

The table below sets out the purposes for which we use your personal information and the lawful basis we rely on for each. We may rely on more than one lawful basis for a particular purpose — please contact us if you need details of the specific basis we rely on.

5.1 Communications from us

We may send you communications about church life — service times, events, ministry news and prayer needs — where you are a member of the congregation or have asked to receive them. You can ask us to stop sending you these communications at any time by contacting us at info@christ-life-church.co.za. Opting out will not apply to communications we need to send you about something you have specifically asked for, such as a reply to your enquiry or a receipt for a donation.

We do not share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

5.2 Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another compatible reason. If we need to use it for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and explain the lawful basis that allows us to do so.

6. Prayer requests, pastoral care and special personal information

This section matters, so we have set it out separately.

A prayer request or a pastoral conversation often contains Special Personal Information as defined in POPIA — for example information about your health, your family circumstances, or your religious beliefs. POPIA places stricter conditions on how this information may be processed.

6.1 How we handle prayer requests

• Prayer requests submitted through this website are emailed to the church office and seen by the pastor and the office staff who handle correspondence.
• A request may be shared with our prayer team or intercessors so that they can pray for you. Everyone who serves on these teams is required to keep what they receive confidential.
• We will not read your prayer request out in a service, print it in a bulletin, publish it on social media, or share it with the wider congregation unless you have specifically asked us to.
• Information shared in pastoral counselling is treated as confidential and is not added to your membership record, unless you ask us to record it.

6.2 Withdrawing your consent

You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting the Information Officer. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we lawfully did with the information before you withdrew it, and it does not undo prayers already prayed.

7. Photographs, recordings and live streaming

We record our sermons and make them available on this website as audio files and presentation notes. We also take photographs at services, events and outreaches, which we may publish on this website and on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

7.1 What we do

• Sermon recordings capture the preacher and the platform. Where a recording includes a congregant's voice — for example, a testimony, a question or a prayer — we will ask that person's permission before we publish it.
• Photographs of gatherings — general, wide shots of a service, event or outreach — are published on the basis of our legitimate interest in showing the life of the church.
• Photographs of identifiable individuals, where a person is the clear subject of the picture, are published only with that person's consent.
• Photographs of children are published only with the consent of a parent or guardian. See section 8.

7.2 Your choices

If you would prefer not to appear in photographs or recordings, please tell a member of the media team or the church office and we will do our best to accommodate you. If a photograph or recording of you has already been published and you would like it removed, contact the Information Officer at ian@christ-life-church.co.za and we will remove it from our website and our own social media pages.

Please note that once material has been shared onward by others, or has been cached or indexed by a search engine or social media platform, we cannot guarantee that every copy can be removed.

8. Children's information

We run a Children's Ministry, Sunday School and a Youth Ministry, and we take the protection of children's information seriously. Under POPIA, a child is a person under 18 years of age, and their personal information may generally only be processed with the consent of a competent person — normally a parent or legal guardian.

• We collect a child's information only from a parent or guardian, or from a school or organisation that has obtained the parent's consent.
• We collect only what we need to care for the child safely: their name and age, the parent or guardian's contact details, and any medical, allergy or dietary information relevant to their safety.
• We do not publish a child's full name, school, contact details or any information that would allow a stranger to identify or locate them.
• We publish photographs of children only with the written consent of a parent or guardian, and a parent or guardian may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting the church office.
• Children's records are kept securely and are accessible only to the leaders responsible for that ministry.

9. Giving and payments

You can give to the Church online through Payfast (by card or instant EFT), by SnapScan, by card on the Yoco machine at church, or by electronic funds transfer to our bank account.

• We never receive or store your card number, PIN, CVV or banking login details. Those are handled entirely by Payfast, SnapScan, Yoco or your bank, each of which is responsible for the security of that data under its own terms and privacy policy.
• What we do receive is the amount, the date, and any reference you supply — which usually includes your name and the purpose of the gift. When you give through the Payfast form on our website, the name, email address (if given), amount and purpose you enter are sent to Payfast to process the payment, and Payfast then confirms the completed payment back to our website so that it can be recorded and the finance team notified.
• We use this information to account for the gift, to allocate it to the purpose you chose, to issue a receipt or tax certificate where applicable, and to meet our record-keeping obligations as a public benefit organisation.
• Giving records are accessible only to the treasurer, the finance team and our auditors. They are not shared with ministry leaders or the wider congregation.

10. Who we share your personal information with

10.1 Inside the church

We share personal information with our pastors, office staff, ministry leaders, group leaders and volunteers, and with the Pinkster Protestante Kerk body, only to the extent that they need it to carry out their role. Everyone who handles personal information on our behalf is required to follow this Policy and to keep the information confidential.

10.2 Outside the church

We may share personal information with:

• Operators who provide IT, website hosting, email and system administration services to us;
• Payment providers — Payfast, SnapScan, Yoco and our bank;
• Google, in respect of website analytics, spam protection and fonts, as described in section 4;
• Professional advisers — auditors, accountants, lawyers and insurers;
• Regulators and authorities where we are required to report or disclose;
• A court or other authority where we are legally obliged to share your personal information.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information, to process it only on our instructions and for specified purposes, and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes.

11. Transfers outside South Africa

Some of the services we use process personal information outside South Africa. POPIA (section 72) allows this where the recipient is subject to laws or binding agreements that provide an adequate level of protection, or where you have consented.

• Google (Analytics, reCAPTCHA and Fonts) processes technical data, including your IP address, on servers outside South Africa. Google is contractually bound by data protection terms that provide a comparable level of protection.
• Our Zambia outreach. Where we take part in mission work in Zambia, we may share the names and contact details of team members, sponsors and the people we serve with our partners in that country, for the purpose of running the outreach. We share only what is necessary, and we ask our partners to protect it.

12. Data security

We have put appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We limit access to your personal information to those staff, volunteers and service providers who have a genuine need to know, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have procedures to deal with any suspected breach of personal information. Where we are legally required to do so, we will notify you and the Information Regulator of a breach.

13. How long we keep your personal information

We keep your personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes we collected it for, including to satisfy any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. In deciding how long to keep it, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, and whether we can achieve the purpose in another way.

• Contact form messages are kept for as long as needed to deal with your enquiry, and then archived or deleted.
• Prayer requests are kept only for as long as the prayer need is current.
• Membership records are kept for the duration of your membership and for a reasonable period afterwards.
• Financial and giving records are kept for the period required by tax and accounting law.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data — see section 15. We may also anonymise your information, in which case we may use it indefinitely without further notice to you.

14. Social media

We maintain pages on Facebook and Instagram. If you interact with us on a social network, that network will process your information according to its own privacy policy, over which we have no control.

Social media platforms sometimes shorten links. Please exercise caution before clicking a shortened link, even one that appears on our pages.

15. Your rights

Under POPIA you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

1. To be told whether we hold personal information about you, free of charge.
2. To request access to your personal information. This is handled through our PAIA Manual, and a prescribed fee may apply.
3. To request correction of personal information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
4. To request deletion of personal information where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it, or where you have successfully objected to the processing.
5. To object to processing that is based on our legitimate interests, or to processing for direct marketing purposes.
6. To request that we restrict processing — for example while the accuracy of the information is being established.
7. To withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it.
8. To lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator — see section 16.

15.1 How to exercise your rights

Contact the Information Officer at ian@christ-life-church.co.za. To protect your information, we may need to ask you for proof of identity before we act on your request — this is a security measure to make sure personal information is not disclosed to someone who has no right to receive it.

15.2 Fees and timing

You will not have to pay a fee to be told whether we hold your information, to have it corrected, or to object to processing. A prescribed fee applies to a request for access to a record, as set out in our PAIA Manual. We may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to comply, if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within 30 days. Occasionally a request is particularly complex, or you have made a number of requests, and it may take us longer. We will notify you and keep you updated if that happens.

16. Complaints to the Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your personal information or your request, you may complain to the Information Regulator. We would appreciate the chance to address your concerns first.

17. Definitions

Child means a natural person under 18 years of age who is not legally competent, without the assistance of a competent person, to take any action or decision in respect of any matter concerning himself or herself.

Competent person means any person who is legally competent to consent to any action or decision being taken in respect of any matter concerning a child.

Consent means any voluntary, specific and informed expression of will by which permission is given for the processing of personal information.

Data Subject means the person to whom personal information relates — in this Policy, you.

Legitimate interest means our interest in conducting and managing the affairs of the Church so that we can serve you well and safely. We weigh any potential impact on you, both positive and negative, before we rely on this basis, and we do not rely on it where your interests override ours.

Member means a person who has signed up at Christ Life Church, after submitting their information to us and our confirmation of that membership.

Operator means a person who processes personal information for us, under our instruction, without coming under our direct authority.

PAIA means the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000, as amended.

Personal Information means information as defined in POPIA.

POPIA means the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, as amended.

Processing means any operation concerning personal information, including collecting, receiving, recording, organising, storing, updating, retrieving, using, distributing, merging, linking, restricting, degrading, erasing or destroying it.

Responsible Party means the body that determines the purpose of and means for processing personal information — in this Policy, the Church.

Special Personal Information means information concerning a person's religious or philosophical beliefs, race or ethnic origin, trade union membership, political persuasion, health or sex life, or biometric information, or criminal behaviour.

Visitor means a person who attends our services or events but is not a registered member of Christ Life Church.