Privacy
What happens to what you send
Last updated: October 2026
People write to this ministry about things that matter — grief, doubt, recovery, prayer, coming out. That deserves a plain account of where those words go, rather than a page of legal boilerplate nobody reads.
So here is the short version: what you send goes to Tony. Nobody else reads it, it is never published, it is never sold or shared, and you can ask to have it deleted at any time.
What is collected
The contact form
Your email address, the category you pick, and your message. The email address is used to reply to you, and for nothing else. Writing in signs you up for nothing. There is no mailing list.
The forum question form
Your question, and — unless you choose to ask anonymously — your name and email address.
Anonymous means anonymous. When that box is ticked, your name and email are not sent from your browser, and the server is written to ignore those fields entirely. There is no hidden copy. If you are not out, or not out to everyone, that option exists for exactly this reason and you should feel free to use it.
Visits to pages
This site counts page visits so it is possible to know which writing is being read. That counting is anonymous and aggregate — which page, and when. There are no advertising trackers, no third-party analytics scripts, no social media pixels, and no accounts to create.
What is deliberately not collected
- No IP address is stored with any submission. An address kept next to an anonymous message would undo the anonymity, so it is not kept.
- No tracking cookies and no advertising. Nothing here follows you to other sites, and nothing about you is sold or given to advertisers, now or ever.
- Nothing you write is used to train AI models, either by this ministry or by any third party. The same restriction this site places on its own content, in the terms of use, applies to yours.
Who can see it
Tony E Hansen, and no one else. Submissions are not posted publicly, not shown to other members of any congregation, and not shared with any church, organization, or third party.
Messages are delivered and stored using Amazon Web Services in the United States, encrypted in transit and at rest. For forum questions, the notification email sent to Tony deliberately contains no question text at all — just a reference number — so that the only copy of what you wrote stays in one place rather than living indefinitely in an inbox.
Forum questions are raised without your name attached unless you tick the box on the form giving permission to use it. Unticked is the default, so doing nothing keeps you unattributed. Submitting anonymously means there is no name to attach in the first place.
How long it is kept
Nothing expires automatically. Forum questions are kept until they are deliberately deleted, which happens once the forum they were submitted for is over. Contact messages are kept as long as they are useful for replying and following up, and no longer.
You can ask for yours to be deleted at any time, for any reason or none, through the contact page. You never have to explain why, and asking is a perfectly ordinary thing to do. If you submitted a forum question anonymously there is nothing linking it to you, so say roughly what it was about and it will be found and removed.
Two honest limits
This is not confidential pastoral conversation
A message typed into a web form is not the same thing as a private conversation with a pastor, and it may lack the legal protection that such a conversation can carry. If you need to say something that must stay privileged, say it in person instead — ask, and that conversation can be arranged.
Please do not use these forms in an emergency
Submissions are read periodically, not continuously, so a form is the wrong tool when something is urgent. If you or someone you love is in danger right now, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or 911. More places to turn are on the care & support page.
And one thing said plainly rather than buried: if something you write indicates that a child is being harmed, or that someone is in immediate danger, Tony may be obliged — morally and in some circumstances legally — to act on it, including by contacting someone who can help. That is the one exception to everything above, and it exists because silence in that situation would do more harm than good.
Terms for what you submit
By sending something through this site, you agree that:
- What you write stays yours. You are giving permission for it to be read, and for a forum question to be raised and discussed without your name attached — You keep ownership of your words.
- Please write about yourself. Leave out private details about other people unless they have agreed to have their situation discussed — especially anything about someone else's sexual orientation or gender identity, which is theirs to share rather than ours.
- Nothing harassing or threatening. Submissions that threaten or target someone are set aside and reviewed rather than used, and may be deleted or reported. Hard questions, sharply-put questions, and questions that quote something cruel said to you are all welcome — that is a different thing entirely, and the difference is understood.
- Not every question can be used. There is limited time in a forum and some questions are better answered privately. If yours is not raised, it has still been read and it still counts.
If this notice changes
The date at the top says when this was last revised. If what happens to submitted information ever changes materially, this page changes with it — and a change would apply only going forward, never to something you already sent under these terms.
Questions about any of this
Ask. The contact page reaches Tony directly, and a question about how your information is handled is a perfectly good reason to write.
See also the terms of use covering how this ministry's own writing may be shared.