Your reflection is yours.
Sembrae is a non-profit ministry. We don’t run ads, we don’t sell your information, and we don’t train AI on your private writing. This policy describes — in plain terms, and matching what our code actually does — what we collect, why, and the controls you hold.
Last updated: July 25, 2026
1. Who we are
Sembrae is a Scripture-grounded AI service that helps individuals and churches carry Sunday’s message through the week. It is operated by Mataron as a non-profit ministry (“Sembrae,” “we,” “us”). This policy covers our website and app at the Sembrae domains.
Because we are non-profit and cost-recovery, our incentives are different from an ad-funded product: we collect the minimum we need to run the service well and keep it sustainable — not to profile you or monetize your data.
2. Our non-profit promises
- We do not sell or rent your personal information, ever.
- We do not show advertising and do not share your data with ad networks.
- We do not use your private content to train AI models.
- Scripture is the authority. The AI answers only from retrieved sources, cites them, and never invents doctrine.
- Your church’s data stays your church’s. Each church is isolated; content never crosses from one church to another.
3. Information we collect
Account & sign-in
Your name and email, and a password if you create one (passwords are stored only as a strong one-way hash — we never see or store the password itself). If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and basic profile (Google scopes openid email profile) — nothing more, and no access to your Gmail, contacts, or files.
Profile & affiliation
An optional profile picture you upload (stored as a small downscaled image), and an optional self-reported church affiliation (church name, denomination, location). Your affiliation is used only to gauge aggregate interest by church/region; you can revoke that consent at any time and it stops counting.
Content you create
Questions you ask, sermons you submit (a link, an upload, or pasted text), and the study guides, devotionals, journals, prayers, notes, group shares, and music favorites you generate or save. Your private tier (journals, prayers, notes, personal devotionals) is private to you by default.
Voice recordings (mobile app)
In the mobile app you can record a sermon or teaching to turn it into text. That audio is transcribed as described in “AI processing & your sources” below, and only the resulting transcript text you choose to submit is uploaded to and stored by Sembrae. Sembrae never receives or stores the recording itself.
Usage & operational metadata
Which features you use and how often, the compute/token cost of AI generations, speech-to-text minutes, and timestamps. We use this to keep the free tier sustainable and to detect abuse. This metadata records counts and cost — never the text of your questions or answers.
Technical, cookies & browser storage
Your IP address and basic device/browser information, and server logs that are automatically scrubbed of personal data. From your IP we derive a coarse location (country, region, city — never a precise position) to understand where Sembrae is being used.
We set two cookies, both HttpOnly so no script can read them, and both strictly necessary: one keeps you signed in, and one protects a “Continue with Google/Apple” sign-in for the ten minutes it is in flight. We also keep a short-lived access token and a few preferences in your browser’s own storage. We use no analytics, no advertising, and no cross-site tracking cookies. Every cookie is named and explained in our Cookie Notice.
Donations
Sembrae is free; we don’t sell access. If you choose to donate, your gift is handled entirely by Stripe on Stripe-hosted pages. We never receive or store your card number. We keep only Stripe’s identifiers and the status of any recurring gift.
4. How we use information
- To provide the service — ground answers in Scripture and your church’s sources, generate study guides and devotionals, and remember your history.
- To keep it sustainable and safe — meter usage to enforce free-tier limits and to flag abuse or runaway cost (cost-recovery, not profit).
- To communicate with you — account, security, and service messages; and, only if you choose, a named invitation to your church’s leadership.
- To comply with law — meet legal obligations and protect the safety and rights of our community.
We do not use your information for advertising or to train AI models.
5. AI processing & your sources
Sembrae uses AI to synthesize cited answers and to understand text. To do this we send the minimum necessary to specialized providers acting on our behalf: Anthropic (the Claude language model), Voyage AI (text embeddings for search), and Deepgram (speech-to-text for sermon audio we process on our servers — for example, when you add a sermon by link or file upload). Under our agreements and their API terms, these providers process your content to return a result and do not use it to train their models.
Voice & audio: how recordings are transcribed
When you record a sermon or teaching in the mobile app, the audio is handled differently from the providers above. The app saves the recording to a temporary file on your device and, when you stop, sends that audio to Apple’s speech-recognition service to produce a text transcript. Apple processes the audio under Apple’s own privacy policy, and we do not control Apple’s retention of that audio. The temporary file is deleted from your device immediately after transcription finishes.
Sembrae’s servers never receive or store the audio from a mobile recording — only the transcript text you choose to submit is uploaded to and stored by Sembrae. This is different from audio you add on the web by link or file upload, which our servers transcribe with Deepgram (above) and then delete once the transcript is made.
Where the law treats voice recordings as personal data — for example under the GDPR or California’s CCPA/CPRA — the same posture holds: for mobile recordings Sembrae holds only the transcript text, the audio itself is processed by Apple under Apple’s policy, and we do not sell voice data or use it for advertising or to train AI models. You can exercise your rights over the transcript text we hold as described in “Your rights & choices.”
Every substantive answer is grounded in retrieved sources and cited by authority tier; the AI never invents doctrine, and Scripture always outranks AI synthesis.
7. Google user data (Limited Use)
When you choose “Sign in with Google,” we request only your basic identity (openid email profile). Sembrae’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We use this data only to create and secure your account — never to advertise, and never sold or transferred for unrelated purposes. You can review or revoke Sembrae’s access anytime at your Google Account permissions page.
10. How we protect your data
- Encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest.
- Your private tier is encrypted with a per-user key — your journals, prayers, notes, and personal devotionals can’t be read by other members or even by a church administrator.
- Per-church and per-group encryption keys (envelope encryption); sensitive fields like document titles are encrypted.
- Strict church isolation enforced in the database (row-level security), so data cannot cross between churches; a cross-church leak is treated as a severe incident and is verified by automated tests.
- Least-privilege access, privacy-redacted logs, and an append-only audit trail that records actions but never your content or email.
No system is perfectly secure, but we design for the principle that your reflection is yours.
11. Your rights & choices
You are in control of your information:
- Access & export — download a copy of your data (a decrypted export of your account and private content) from your profile.
- Delete — permanently remove your account and associated data (see below).
- Correct — edit your profile and affiliation at any time.
- Consent controls — turn off the use of your church affiliation for aggregate signals.
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or California’s CCPA/CPRA), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, port, or object to processing of your personal data. Because we don’t sell personal information, there is nothing to opt out of selling. To exercise any right, use the in-app controls or contact us — we’ll respond within the time the law requires.
12. Deleting your data
You can delete your data at any time:
- In the app — go to Profile → Delete account. This permanently deletes your account, your private tier, your history, and your personal content.
- By email — write to privacy@mataron.org from your account email and ask us to delete your data.
When you delete your account, we remove your personal information and private content from our active systems and it ages out of encrypted backups on our normal cycle. Shared community content (for example, a sermon record that other people also reference) may remain as a community resource, but it is detached from your identity. We may retain a minimal, non-identifying record where the law requires it.
One thing we do keep, and we’d rather say so plainly than bury it: your usage counters for the current month. Sembrae is free and shared, so fair-use limits are what keep it running for everyone — and if deleting your account reset those limits, they would only apply to people who didn’t know that. What we store is a one-way fingerprint of your email address (it cannot be turned back into an email), the current month, and a number. No name, no content, no account. If you come back, it’s used once to restore your counters and then deleted; if you don’t, it expires when the month turns.
13. Data retention
We keep your information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the service. After deletion, personal data is removed from active systems and expires from backups on our normal schedule — except the current month’s usage counters described in Deleting your data, which are kept against a one-way fingerprint so fair-use limits mean something. We may keep aggregate, non-identifying metrics (e.g. total compute cost) for sustainability planning — these contain no content and cannot identify you.
14. Children & churches with minors
Sembrae is intended for adults and for church use. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country) without appropriate consent. If your church ministers to minors and uses Sembrae with them, the church is responsible for obtaining the consent its context requires. If you believe a child has provided us personal information without proper consent, contact us and we will remove it.
15. Where data is processed
Sembrae is hosted on Microsoft Azure in the United States, and some of our providers process data in the United States. If you use Sembrae from another country, you consent to your information being processed in the United States, where data-protection laws may differ from your own. Audio you record in the mobile app is sent to Apple’s speech-recognition service and processed under Apple’s privacy policy; the locations and terms of that processing are Apple’s.
16. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the Service evolves or the law changes. When we do, we’ll revise the “Last updated” date above and, for material changes, give notice in the app or by email. Continuing to use Sembrae after an update means you accept the revised policy.
17. Contact us
Questions, requests, or concerns about your privacy? Email privacy@mataron.org and we’ll help. You can also reach us about a data deletion or access request at the same address.
8. Signing in with a third party
If you sign in through a third-party identity provider (such as Google, and others we may add), we receive only your name and email to create and maintain your account. We do not post on your behalf, read your messages, or access your contacts. You can revoke that connection with the provider, and you can delete your Sembrae account at any time (see “Deleting your data” below).