For churches
How Church Profiles Work
The Living Bread creates a factual public profile for a church from public sources such as OpenStreetMap and official church websites, showing where each fact came from and when it was last confirmed. Any church can claim its profile to control it, and anyone can request a correction. Results are ranked by relevance, distance, requested features, and freshness, never by payment. This page explains all of it honestly, because trust is the whole point.
How a profile is created
When a church is not yet in our directory, we assemble a basic profile from public information so that someone searching nearby can still find it. This starts as a Public Record: unclaimed, built only from what is already public, and clearly marked as such. Creating a profile is never a claim that the church has joined us.
Where the data comes from, with provenance
We draw from public sources like OpenStreetMap, official church websites, and public directories. Each profile shows its provenance (where a fact came from) and a last confirmed date, so you can see how current it is and judge it for yourself. We do not invent facts, and we do not present guesses as certainties.
How churches claim and correct them
A church leader can claim a profile to control it; our team confirms affiliation before it is marked Verified. Anyone, member or visitor, can request a correction, and corrections are reviewed before they go live. The church itself is always the authority on its own information.
How ranking works
When someone searches, results are ordered by relevance to what they asked, distance from where they are, the features they requested (such as a service time or a ministry), and freshness of the information. There is no pay-to-rank. No church can buy a higher position, and declining any feature never lowers where a church appears.
What is public and what is private
Public profiles carry only public-facing information a church would want a visitor to know: location, service times, beliefs, contact. Personal data about members is not part of a public profile, and information about minors is never exposed. A church can ask for anything questionable to be removed.
How AI is used
We use AI to help organize public information, summarize what a church publishes about itself, and match a searcher’s need to a nearby church. AI never fabricates a church’s beliefs or claims a partnership. A claimed profile always reflects what the church itself has stated, not an AI guess.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the information in a church profile come from?
- From public sources such as OpenStreetMap, official church websites, and public directories. Every profile shows its provenance and a last-confirmed date so you can see how current each fact is.
- Can a church pay to rank higher?
- No. Results are ranked by relevance, distance, requested features, and freshness. There is no pay-to-rank, and declining any feature never affects where a church appears.
- How do I correct something that is wrong?
- Anyone can request a correction, and a church leader can claim the profile to control it directly. Corrections are reviewed before they publish, and the church is always the authority on its own information.
We serve the Church, we do not replace it
The Living Bread is an independent Christian discovery platform, not any church’s official website. We exist so that a person searching in the dark can find a real, local family of believers near them, and so that your church can be found accurately, on your own terms. If a profile is yours, claim it and it is yours to keep true. If something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. That is the whole promise.
Jesus Christ is Lord.