The two marks

Every listing carries one line of provenance at the bottom: a mark, a source, and a date. There are only two states you’ll normally see, plus one you’ll see rarely.

Confirmed.The detail came from the congregation’s own website or its denomination’s official directory, and we checked it on the date shown.

Not yet confirmed. We found the congregation, but nobody has cross-checked the details against a primary source. It is still shown, because a church you can find and phone is more useful than a blank page — but it is labelled, every time.

Disputed. Someone told us a detail is wrong. It comes off the primary display until we re-check it.

Where the details come from

In order of authority, and the order we prefer:

• The congregation itself. Once a church claims its listing, what it tells us outranks everything else and is never overwritten by an automated process.
• Denominational directories.A denomination’s own list of its own congregations. These are authoritative about affiliation and usually reliable about address.
• The church’s own website. The best source for service times, and the one we check them against.
• Web search.Used to find congregations we don’t have yet. Anything sourced this way and not cross-checked stays marked as unconfirmed.

What we don’t do

We don’t copy listing details out of Google Maps. Names, addresses, phone numbers, hours, ratings, and photos on Google are Google’s to serve, not ours to warehouse. Where we have a Google place identifier we use it for one thing: a link, so you can get directions in a tap.

We don’t invent service times. If a church’s own site doesn’t publish them and nobody has told us, the listing says they aren’t verified rather than guessing at a 10:00 or 11:00 that would be right most of the time and wrong often enough to make somebody drive for nothing.

How often it’s re-checked

• Service times — the most volatile field and the most valuable. Re-checked on a rolling basis, oldest first.
• Name, address, phone — re-checked when a listing comes up in the queue or when someone reports a problem.
• Claimed listings — never overwritten automatically. The congregation owns them.

Where this stands today

9,675 North Carolina congregations are listed. 1,951of them carry confirmed service times — which means most do not, yet. North Carolina has roughly 15,700 congregations, so what’s here is a start on a long job, and every page is written to say so rather than imply otherwise.

Found something wrong? Tell us. It gets re-checked against the church’s own source, not just edited.