How to leave, and what happens to your data.
Leaving should be as clear as joining. This explains how to delete your account, what happens at each stage, what we keep afterwards, and why.
Deletion is permanent after the grace period. If you want space rather than an ending, you have gentler options. If what you want is genuinely to go, the rest of this document is for you.
You can request a copy of your data before you delete. Write to support@thewaychrist.com from your account email. We aim to fulfil export requests within 30 days.
Once deletion completes we cannot recreate what was deleted, so make this request first.
In the app: Settings, then Account management, then Delete account. You will be asked to confirm, and we will explain what happens before anything is final.
By email: write to support@thewaychrist.com from the address on your account. We may need to confirm it is really you before acting.
The moment deletion is confirmed:
Nobody is told that you deleted your account.
For 14 days your account is deactivated but recoverable.
To come back: sign in with the same email and password during the 14 days, or write to support@thewaychrist.com. Your profile, saved churches, groups, and settings return as they were.
To leave sooner: you cannot shorten the window in the app. Write to support@thewaychrist.com if you need deletion accelerated for a safety reason and we will look at it case by case.
During the grace period you are invisible to everyone. Nobody can see you, message you, or find you.
After 14 days, deletion becomes final and we permanently remove:
Backups are purged within 90 days. Backups exist so that a hardware failure does not destroy the service; they are not used to resurrect a deleted account, and they age out on that schedule.
We are not going to tell you that everything disappears, because it would not be true. Three categories survive deletion.
Messages you sent stay in the conversations you sent them to, attributed to “Former member”, with your identifying profile information removed. A conversation with half of it missing is confusing and can be actively misleading — especially where it matters to someone’s safety record. You can delete individual messages yourself before you delete your account.
Safety and moderation records — cases, evidence snapshots, enforcement history, audit logs — are kept for at least 12 months after deletion, or longer where the law requires. Deleting an account cannot be a way to erase a record of harm; otherwise the simplest way to defeat moderation would be to delete and re-register. These records are restricted to safety and administrative roles and are never used for marketing, analytics, or product development.
Records we are legally required to keep. Where a law, a regulator, or a preservation obligation requires specific information, we keep only what is required, for only as long as it is required.
What we never keep: your precise location — we never stored it in the first place. And we do not sell any of your information, before or after deletion.
If you suggested a correction to a church listing and it was applied, the corrected information stays — it belongs to the listing, not to you. The record of who submitted it is retained in the moderation provenance log under the retention rules above, and your name is not shown publicly.
If you are the only organiser of a group, deleting your account triggers our succession process: a co-organiser is promoted where one exists, otherwise members are invited to volunteer subject to approval, and otherwise the group is archived read-only after a notice period. Please consider handing over to a co-organiser before you delete, so the group is not disrupted.
An account removed for a serious violation is not eligible for reactivation, and the retention rules above apply. If you believe the removal was wrong, the appeal route is in the Content Moderation Policy.
If we learn an account belongs to someone below the minimum age, we remove it and delete the data without waiting for a grace period.
After deletion is final you are welcome to create a new account with the same email. It starts empty — we cannot restore anything from the deleted account, and rejoining Intentional Fellowship requires fresh consent.
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