1. The agreement
These terms are an agreement between you and MinistryAI, a nonprofit corporation recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, EIN 41-4049715, with a mailing address at Studio City, CA 91604, United States.
By using ministry-ai.org or any MinistryAI workspace, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you are agreeing on behalf of a church, seminary or other organization, you confirm you are authorized to bind it, and "you" means that organization.
2. What we provide
MinistryAI provides AI tools built for ministry, including Cornerstone Bible Study, Shepherd Studio and other workspaces we may offer. The platform answers questions from a defined body of approved teaching materials, with citations, and is designed to defer to human pastoral leadership rather than replace it.
Some workspaces are generally available and some are in pilot. Pilot features may change substantially or be withdrawn.
3. Who may use the service
You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account. Where a church gives access to a participant aged 13 to 17, the church is responsible for obtaining any parental consent its own policy or applicable law requires. Administrative accounts require an adult.
4. Accounts and access
Sign-in is handled through an identity provider. Keep your credentials confidential, and tell us promptly if you believe an account has been compromised. You are responsible for activity under your account.
Access to an organization-based workspace is granted and withdrawn by that organization's administrator, not by us.
5. Church workspaces
A church or seminary that adopts MinistryAI decides which materials are ingested into its workspace, who has access and at what level, and how pastoral oversight works. The organization warrants that it has the right to provide the materials it submits, and that doing so does not infringe anyone's copyright or breach any confidence.
Each workspace's data is kept isolated from every other workspace's, and the organization owns and governs its own workspace and data.
6. Your content and your church's materials
You keep ownership of what you write. Your church keeps ownership of the materials it provides. Nothing here transfers copyright to us.
You grant MinistryAI a limited, non-exclusive licence to host, store, process and display that content solely to operate and support the service for you and your organization, and to route submissions according to the privacy tier chosen. That licence ends when the content is deleted, except for backups we clear on our ordinary cycle.
We do not sell your content, and we do not use it to train models for anyone outside your organization's workspace.
7. Acceptable use
Do not use MinistryAI to:
- break the law, or help anyone else to;
- harass, threaten, defame or endanger anyone;
- upload material you have no right to upload;
- impersonate another person, or misrepresent your role in a congregation;
- attempt to gain access to another workspace, another person's account, or any part of our systems you are not authorized to use;
- probe, scan or stress-test the platform, or interfere with its operation;
- extract another church's corpus, or use the service to build a competing dataset; or
- present AI-generated output as the settled teaching of a church without that church's review.
We may suspend or end access that breaches these rules.
8. What AI answers are, and are not
The platform generates answers from a defined corpus and cites its sources so you can check them. Even so, AI systems can be wrong, can miss context, and can state something incorrect with apparent confidence.
Answers are a study aid, not authority. Output from MinistryAI is not pastoral counsel, spiritual direction, or the official teaching of any church. It is not medical, mental-health, legal, financial or professional advice of any kind. Check the citations, and take questions that matter to your pastor or a qualified professional.
9. Emergencies and pastoral care
MinistryAI is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number. In the United States, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988. Please also reach out to your pastor or someone you trust.
The platform is designed to recognize signs of distress and point the person toward a pastor or care-team member. That design is a safeguard, not a guarantee: it may not recognize every situation, and it is never a substitute for a person.
10. Cost and donations
MinistryAI is provided to churches, denominations, seminaries and ministry organizations at no cost. We are funded by donations. Donations are voluntary, are not a condition of access, and are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Gifts are tax-deductible in the United States to the extent allowed by law; we do not give tax advice, so please consult your own adviser.
11. Open-source components
Parts of the platform are open-source and are governed by their own licences, which apply to those components in place of these terms. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under an applicable open-source licence.
12. Availability and changes
We work to keep the service available, but we do not promise uninterrupted access. We may change, suspend or discontinue features. Where a change materially reduces what an organization relies on, we will give reasonable notice and, where practical, an export of its data.
We may update these terms. When a change is material we will post the new version here with a new effective date and give notice before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the new terms.
13. Ending the agreement
You may stop using MinistryAI at any time, and an organization may end its workspace at any time. We may suspend or end access if these terms are breached, if it is necessary to protect people or the platform, or if we discontinue the service.
When a workspace ends, we will return or delete its data at the organization's direction, subject to the retention periods in our Privacy Policy.
14. Disclaimers
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, or that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that its output will be accurate or complete.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of the above may not apply to you.
15. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, MinistryAI and its officers, directors, employees and volunteers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, goodwill, or ministry opportunity, arising out of or relating to your use of the service.
Because MinistryAI is provided free of charge, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these terms or the service will not exceed one hundred United States dollars (US$100).
Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.
16. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, and you and we consent to that jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory laws of your own country.
If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest remains in force.