Effective September 5, 2026
Ask Pastor Rob is a ministry tool of The Net Community Church (“The Net,” “we,” “us”), 2620 Clinton Ave W, Huntsville, AL 35805. It lets you explore Pastor Rob Hall's sermons in conversation with an AI trained on his public teaching. It is an AI — not Pastor Rob, not a counselor, and not an emergency service. Questions about this policy: info@thenet.org.
| Information | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your messages, while you chat | Every conversation | Sent to our AI provider to generate the reply; not written to our database unless you save the chat |
| Email and first name | Only if you create an account | Signing in, and letting Rob greet you by name |
| Saved conversations | Only when you press “Save chat” | Your private library |
| Daily usage counters | Every conversation | Fair daily limits for guests and accounts; a one-way hashed form of your network address protects the ministry from abuse |
| Safety-flagged excerpts | Only when a message is flagged | See “The safety exception” below |
| What you send to the real Pastor Rob | Only when you press “Ask the real Rob” | That conversation — the questions and the answers — plus any name, email or phone you choose to add, so a real person can follow up. The panel says so before you send. |
| Feedback | Only when you tap 👍 or 👎 | Improving answers. The question, the answer, and which sermons the answer drew on are stored with your verdict — not the rest of your conversation. |
| Review sessions | Only for signed-in members of the church's own team | When someone with a role in the team portal leaves feedback, their test conversation is captured and attributed to them. This is the church testing its own tool; it never applies to visitors. |
| Technical error reports | When the app hits a bug | Fixing it. Reports contain technical details and a random account id — never what you said |
To generate a reply, your message (and, for longer conversations, a rolling summary of earlier turns) is sent to our AI provider, xAI, which processes it to produce the response and to search Pastor Rob's archive of sermons, the posts he has written for this site, and his book. xAI does not use API data to train its models and retains it briefly for abuse monitoring under its own terms. Unsaved conversations are not written to our database. When you choose to hear a reply in Pastor Rob's voice, the reply text is sent to xAI to be spoken; when you speak a question, the audio is sent to xAI to be transcribed and is not stored anywhere.
Our service providers, each processing data only to provide the service: Google Firebase (hosting, sign-in, database), xAI (AI responses, voice), and Sentry (error monitoring). We do not sell your information and we do not share it with advertisers.
Every message is automatically screened by software for signs of serious danger: thoughts of suicide or self-harm, intent to harm another person, or disclosure of abuse. If — and only if — the system flags a message, that message and a small amount of surrounding context are retained and shown to designated safety reviewers at The Net, who decide whether follow-up is needed. Serious flags also temporarily lower that account's daily limits until a reviewer looks. This is the only circumstance in which a person reads conversation content you did not choose to save or send.
Where we believe someone is in imminent danger of harming themselves or others, we may contact emergency services. Alabama law makes clergy mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse or neglect; if a reviewed flag discloses that, we will report it as the law requires. Beyond those two cases we do not report conversations to anyone, and we never hand conversation data to third parties for marketing or profiling.
We use no advertising cookies. Your browser stores a sign-in token (so you stay signed in), your preferences (voice on/off, answer style), an unsaved draft of the conversation on screen so a reload doesn't lose it, and your own recent answer times for the on-screen timer. All of that stays on your device. Google Analytics for Firebase collects anonymous usage statistics (pages, device type); you can block it with any content blocker without affecting the app.
Ask Pastor Rob is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Teens should use it with a parent's knowledge. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Data is stored in Google Firebase with industry-standard protections. Access to stored data is limited to Cloud Functions we operate and to a small named team (the church's owners, admins and safety officers) through the team portal. Saved conversations are kept until you delete them. Safety flags are kept for two years to support follow-up and accountability, then deleted. “Ask the real Rob” requests and feedback are kept until handled and periodically archived. Usage counters reset daily. Error reports are retained by Sentry for 90 days.
We'll post any changes here with a new effective date. Material changes will be noted inside the app.