Acceptable Use Policy

Effective date: June 15, 2026 Last updated: June 15, 2026

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") describes prohibited uses of the Vestry service at getvestry.com (the "Service") operated by Vestry LLC ("Vestry," "we," "us," or "our"). This AUP supplements and is incorporated into our Terms of Service. In the event of any conflict between this AUP and the Terms of Service, the Terms of Service control.

By using the Service, you agree to comply with this AUP. The Service is intended for worship-planning use by churches, ministries, and individual worship leaders. The restrictions in this AUP apply to you and to all Authorized Users of your Workspace.

1. General Restrictions

You may not, and may not permit any Authorized User or third party to:

(a) use the Service in violation of any applicable law, regulation, court order, or contractual obligation;

(b) upload, post, or transmit any content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, threatening, fraudulent, or invasive of another's privacy;

(c) use the Service to transmit malware, viruses, ransomware, worms, or any other harmful code;

(d) attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, any other user's account, or Vestry's underlying systems;

(e) reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Service, except to the extent that this restriction is prohibited by law;

(f) interfere with or disrupt the Service, including by overloading it, flooding it with traffic, or attacking it;

(g) impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;

(h) send spam, unsolicited messages, mass-marketing campaigns, or other unauthorized commercial communications using the Service; or

(i) resell, sublicense, time-share, or otherwise commercially exploit the Service except as expressly authorized by Vestry in writing.

2. No Infringing Content

You are responsible for the legality of any content you contribute to the Service, including custom songs, lyric files, sheet-music PDFs, chord charts, audio files, or any other material you upload or create.

You represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to upload, store, and use the content you contribute. You may not contribute content that infringes copyright, trademark, or other intellectual-property rights, including reproductions of published lyrics, sheet music, chord charts, or recordings that you do not have a license to use.

You agree to honor takedown notices we receive from rights holders, and to remove or take corrective action when we forward a takedown notice to you under our DMCA process (see Terms of Service Section 7).

Repeat infringers will be terminated. Per our Terms of Service Section 7.3, accounts that accumulate three or more valid, unrebutted DMCA infringement strikes within any 12-month period will be terminated.

3. No Misuse of Algorithmic and Embedding-Based Features

Vestry uses algorithmic and embedding-based features to suggest songs, generate worship journeys, and rank matches. You may not:

(a) attempt to scrape, reverse-engineer, manipulate, or extract the underlying models, embeddings, or vector data;

(b) bulk-export song recommendations, theology profiles, or other algorithm-derived content for use outside Vestry; or

(c) probe Vestry's algorithmic features for the purpose of training, evaluating, or improving any third-party model, system, or service.

4. AI Training, Scraping, and Text-and-Data Mining

Vestry treats its public marketing content differently from its application and user content.

Public marketing content — the pages at getvestry.com, including the FAQ and the Vestry blog — may be used for AI training and text-and-data mining, provided any resulting model, output, or derivative work attributes Vestry (getvestry.com) as the source. This is a limited, revocable license conditioned on attribution.

Application and user content — everything within the Service at app.getvestry.com, including services, song selections, recommendations, theology profiles, prayer notes, custom song entries, member rosters, and community posts, together with all account data — may not be copied, scraped, harvested, or otherwise extracted for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, evaluating, or otherwise informing any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or large language model. Vestry does not consent to the use of this content for AI training purposes.

Vestry additionally permits real-time AI search and answer engines (such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and Google AI Overviews) to access its public-facing pages to answer user queries at request time, provided the source URL is preserved and visibly attributed to Vestry.

Unauthorized AI-training use of application or user content is prohibited and may result in immediate account termination and legal action under applicable law, including copyright statutes.

5. Community Standards

Vestry's community is organized into members-only channels (visible only to authenticated Vestry users) and public channels (publicly accessible on the web and indexable by search engines and AI search engines). The standards below apply to both types of channels equally.

Community features (posts, discussions, comments, replies) are intended for genuine, helpful exchange among worship leaders and church teams. You agree to:

  • Be respectful, on-topic, and constructive. Treat others with the dignity you would expect for yourself.
  • Be helpful. The Vestry community exists to make worship planning better for all of us.
  • Stay relevant. Discussions should relate to worship, music, ministry, or the use of Vestry.
  • Choose the right channel for your content. Sensitive material (prayer requests, pastoral case discussions, member-roster information, internal church matters) belongs in members-only channels. Topics suitable for broad community discussion (theology, song planning, service ideas, and similar) can be posted in public channels.

You will not:

  • Harass, belittle, attack, or threaten other users;
  • Use community features to recruit members of other Workspaces away from their churches;
  • Use community features to promote competing platforms, services, or commercial offerings;
  • Post content that is hateful, sexually explicit, or otherwise inappropriate for a worship-leadership context;
  • Post duplicate, low-effort, or spam content;
  • Post sensitive, confidential, or pastoral-care content (including prayer requests for specific individuals, member personal data, or content shared with you in confidence) in public channels; or
  • Use community features for political campaigning, fundraising for non-Vestry causes, or other off-topic promotion.

You may post in public channels under a pseudonym or "Anonymous" attribution; doing so does not relieve you of any obligation under this AUP. You remain responsible for the content of every post you make, regardless of attribution.

Vestry may, at its sole good-faith discretion, remove community content that violates this AUP from any channel, and may suspend or terminate the offending Authorized User's access to community features. Vestry may de-anonymize a public-channel post (link it to the underlying account) in response to a valid legal process, a DMCA takedown notice, a violation of these Terms, or a credible threat to safety.

6. No Account-Sharing Across Distinct Organizations

Each Vestry Workspace is intended to be used by one church entity (with its affiliated campuses or ministries to the extent your subscription tier permits). You may not:

(a) share account credentials with users outside your Workspace;

(b) allow simultaneous use of the Service by multiple distinct organizations under a single Subscription; or

(c) otherwise circumvent the per-Workspace pricing model.

If your church has multiple campuses or affiliated ministries that require their own Workspaces, each one must be subscribed separately at the applicable pricing.

7. No Sensitive or Special-Category Data Beyond Pastoral Use

The Service is intended for worship-planning use, including pastoral notes such as prayer requests. The Service is not designed for, and you may not use it to store or process:

(a) protected health information regulated by HIPAA or analogous health-privacy laws;

(b) payment-card data subject to PCI-DSS, other than what Stripe handles directly through Stripe Elements during checkout;

(c) financial-account credentials, including online banking passwords or full account/routing numbers;

(d) government identifiers such as Social Security numbers, passport numbers, driver's-license numbers, or tax-identification numbers;

(e) biometric data (fingerprints, facial-recognition templates, voiceprints); or

(f) other special-category data the use of which would impose heightened compliance obligations on Vestry beyond those described in our Privacy Policy.

If you must process such data in connection with your church's operations, please use a tool designed for that purpose (e.g., a HIPAA-compliant church-management system) — not Vestry.

8. Reporting Violations

If you believe another user is violating this AUP, please report it to legal@getvestry.com with:

  • the username, Workspace name, or content URL involved (if applicable);
  • a description of the violation;
  • supporting evidence (screenshots, links, or quotations); and
  • your contact information.

We investigate all reports in good faith. Reporting in bad faith — for example, to harass another user — is itself a violation of this AUP.

9. Enforcement

Vestry may, at its sole good-faith discretion and without prior notice in cases of immediate harm, take any of the following actions in response to a violation of this AUP:

  • Remove the offending content;
  • Issue a written warning;
  • Suspend or restrict access to specific features (such as community posting);
  • Suspend the Workspace or individual Authorized User accounts;
  • Terminate the Subscription and the Workspace (per Terms of Service Section 9); or
  • Pursue any legal remedies available, including injunctive relief and damages, especially for violations involving infringement, malicious conduct, or scraping.

For non-urgent breaches, Vestry will provide written notice and a 30-day opportunity to cure before terminating, in accordance with Terms of Service Section 9.4. Bad-faith breaches, fraud, abusive conduct, immediate security threats, and unlawful activity may be terminated immediately without a cure period.

10. Changes to This AUP

We may update this AUP from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top and, where appropriate, notify you by email or through a prominent notice on the Service at least 30 days before the changes take effect.

11. Contact

For questions about this AUP: