Terms of Use

1. What the service is

Beyond the Message turns a church's recorded services into a searchable sermon archive with AI-generated study guides, a question-and-answer tool grounded in each message, and downloadable study guide PDFs. It is provided to churches, and to the members of those churches, as a study aid.

2. Accounts

Accounts are created with a code issued by a participating church. There is no public sign-up. Your code determines your church and your role:

• Member accounts are read-only. Members can browse and search published messages, read study guides, use Ask, and download PDFs.
• Staff accounts can additionally add, edit, publish, and delete their church's sermon content, and can read full transcripts.

You are responsible for keeping your password and your church's codes confidential, and for everything done under your account. Don't share your login. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been used without your permission. You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account.

A church may revoke a person's access to its archive at any time, and we will act on a church's request regarding accounts tied to it.

3. Sermon content and ownership

Sermon recordings, transcripts, notes, and everything derived from them belong to the church that supplied them, or to the preacher, according to whatever arrangement exists between them. We claim no ownership of that material.

By uploading content, a church grants us the limited license we need to run the service: to store, process, index, transcribe, and generate study material from that content, and to display it to the accounts entitled to see it. That license exists only to operate Beyond the Message for that church, and it ends when the content is deleted.

A church is responsible for having the rights to whatever it uploads, including the preacher's permission.

The Beyond the Message name, logo, software, and interface are ours, and these terms don't transfer any rights in them to you.

4. AI-generated material

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Share your account or your church's signup codes with anyone outside your church.
• Attempt to access another church's archive, another person's account or question history, or any content your role isn't entitled to see.
• Probe, scan, or test the security of the service, or work around any access control, rate limit, or authentication mechanism.
• Scrape, bulk-download, or systematically extract content, including sermon transcripts, by automated means.
• Republish or redistribute another church's sermon content without that church's permission.
• Use the service to break the law, to harass anyone, or to upload material you don't have the rights to.
• Resell, sublicense, or provide the service to third parties as your own.

We may suspend or terminate access that violates these rules, or that threatens the stability or security of the service.

6. Availability and changes

We work to keep Beyond the Message running, but we don't promise uninterrupted or error-free service. Features may change, and parts of the service depend on third-party providers whose availability we don't control. We may modify or discontinue features, and we'll give reasonable notice of material changes that affect churches under an active subscription.

7. Ending your use

You can stop using the service at any time and delete your account from the account deletion page. If a church ends its subscription, its members lose access to that archive. Pricing, how subscriptions are billed, cancellation, and refunds are covered on the billing and cancellation page. We may terminate access for a breach of these terms, and we'll tell you why unless we're legally prevented from doing so.

8. Disclaimers

The service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will meet your requirements, that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that AI-generated content will be accurate.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Beyond the Message will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, revenue, or goodwill, arising out of your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service will not exceed the greater of the amount the relevant church paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred U.S. dollars.

Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

10. Apple App Store terms

The following applies to the iOS app obtained through the Apple App Store:

• This agreement is between you and Beyond the Message only, not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
• Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the purchase price. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to the app.
• Beyond the Message, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim relating to the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to a legal requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection or similar legislation.
• Beyond the Message, not Apple, is responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of any third-party claim that the app infringes that party's intellectual property rights.
• You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

11. General

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. These terms, together with the privacy policy, are the entire agreement between you and Beyond the Message regarding the service.

If we change these terms we will update the date at the top of this page, and we will notify account holders by email before material changes take effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the updated terms.