Privacy Policy

Purpose of this Policy

The purpose of this policy is to explain the types of information The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) Youth Gathering may gather about you, how we may use that information, whether we disclose it to anyone, and the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to change or correct, the information.

The LCMS Youth Gathering gathers and maintains a wide variety of financial and personal information, which is stored in electronic and hard copy files. This includes personal details and financial transactions concerning congregational group registration information and email addresses for specific Gathering Update messages.

Although some of this information can be located in public records, all personal information gathered and maintained is proprietary, sensitive and/or confidential. All employees of the LCMS are required to sign a confidentiality agreement annually, pledging their individual commitment to safeguard your personal information.

Credit Card Transactions

Please note that any credit card transactions made online through the Gathering Store is done through a third-party site. Please visit (cph.org) for information regarding their privacy policy.

For your convenience, the LCMS is pleased to accept a number of major credit cards for the purchase of materials, payment for services and charitable contributions in support of our ministry. The LCMS may keep your credit card information on file for ease in conducting future transactions. Access to such information is restricted to authorized employees, who use credit card information only to process purchases or contributions you initiate and authorize.

We take reasonable precautions to ensure that all credit card transactions that occur through our website are secure. When you submit your credit card information electronically, that transaction is protected using “Secure Socket Layer” (SSL) encryption to prevent your credit card information from being seen as it travels over the Internet. Our network traffic is monitored to identify unauthorized attempts to access, upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. Unauthorized access is prohibited and punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

Safeguarding Your Personal Information

Some pages on our website request and collect information that personally identifies you or allows us to contact you personally. Information you provide to the LCMS Youth Gathering may be tabulated for statistical purposes, and those results may be provided to others, but you will never be individually identified in those results. The data may be used to inform you of events and activities in which we think you may have an interest. We may also use the data to evaluate our programs and design future offerings.

The LCMS Youth Gathering website will only collect personal information that you knowingly and voluntarily provide. Although the information collected is used primarily for purposes specified on the submission page, we may add that information to our records and use it to enhance our future contact with you.

When you provide us with personal information, we will normally respond to your inquiry, request or order. We may also contact you to provide information about activities, programs, or special events we believe may interest you. When we send you such information by email, you will always have an immediate opportunity to modify the frequency of or decline any further such communication.

Although we may provide aggregate data for the purposes of reporting and/or compliance with nonprofit industry standards or government requirements, your personal information will not be identifiable in such data. The LCMS Youth Gathering will not share any of your personal information with any third parties, except as required by law. We do not rent, sell, lend or otherwise provide mailing lists, telephone numbers, mailing addresses or email addresses to other individuals or organizations.

Use of Links

Throughout our web pages, we provide links to other sites that may contain information of interest to visitors and members of the LCMS online community. We take no responsibility for, and exercise no control over, the organizations, views, or accuracy of the information contained on other servers.

Creating a text link from your website to our site does not require permission.

Use of Text and Images

If you would like to publish information you find on our site, please ask permission by sending your request to youth.ministry@lcms.org. Information about using 2025 LCMS Youth Gathering logo is available at www.lcmsgathering.com/media.

For More Information

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, please contact us at youth.ministry@lcms.org.