What's new in NazTrack

Districts can now optionally record a minister's gender as Male or Female. Gender appears on the minister's record when it has been provided and can also be copied from a linked Person record using Sync from Person. Existing minister records remain unchanged until a gender is entered or synced.

Districts can now set the next pastoral review date directly from the Pastoral Reviews page, even when no previous reviews have been recorded. This is useful when a district already has a review schedule but does not have the historical review records needed for NazTrack to calculate it. Setting the date changes the schedule for the pastor's current assignment; it does not create a review record that did not happen.

Districts can now record and track the church/pastoral relationship reviews lead pastors go through with their church. A lead pastor's first review is due two years after their pastoral service begins, and every four years after each review that follows. A new Pastoral Reviews card on each minister's record lets district staff save a review directly against that minister — the church it was held at, the type of review, the result, board and congregational vote counts, and who conducted it. A new Pastoral Reviews page, listed under the Ministers menu, shows every current lead pastor and when their next review is due, with filters for status, church, and due-date range, plus a second tab listing every review already conducted within any date range you choose. Both views can be exported to CSV.

Board of Ministry members can now hold any primary board role and also be designated as serving on the Executive Committee. This fixes situations in which a person serves as Chair, Secretary, Studies Committee Chair, Studies Committee Member, or Member while also serving on the Executive Committee. The Board of Ministry executive committee email audience now follows this independent designation, so members with another primary role are included without losing their role or its permissions.

District church lists can now generate a PDF of mailing labels for a selected set of churches. The PDF is formatted for Avery 5160 address labels: 1 inch by 2 5/8 inches, three columns by ten rows on US Letter paper.

Church records now include a Mailing Name in addition to the official, preferred, and legal names. This separates the wording used on physical mail from the shorter name shown in NazTrack and the formal corporate name, so envelopes can use a clear recipient without changing other church records.

Churches can now manage their finances directly in NazTrack with a complete double-entry Accounting module. A guided setup process helps each church build or import its chart of accounts, add checking, savings, money market, certificate of deposit, and credit card accounts, enter opening balances, and establish fiscal periods. Accounting connects directly with Giving so closed offering batches can be posted as deposits without entering the same income twice. Treasurers can record income and expenses, create deposits and journal entries, write and print checks, track credit card charges and employee reimbursements, manage budgets and vendors, review potential 1099 payments, and reconcile bank and credit card statements. Optional controls support draft and posting workflows, period locking, account codes, and functional expense classifications. The module includes nonprofit financial reports such as the Statement of Financial Position, Statement of Activities, Statement of Cash Flows, Statement of Functional Expenses, Trial Balance, donor-restricted net asset balances, Giving reports, check registers, and 1099 review. Accounting permissions may be assigned separately so churches can give each person only the access needed for their responsibilities.

Districts can now administer the complete Special Service (SPC) request and renewal process in NazTrack. The protected generic application and its approval controls cover the applicable requirements of Manual paragraphs 504, 520, and 530: the nature and location of the ministry assignment, denominational affiliation, the minister's ongoing connection to the Church of the Nazarene, local-church membership and participation, faithful stewardship, geographic scope, annual written District Advisory Board action, Board of General Superintendents approval when required, and district assembly action. The SPC application supports the Manual process but does not replace the minister's separate annual report to the district assembly. Each district begins with a ready-to-use application built from the Manual requirements. District administrators may change the application name and instructions, add district-specific questions, preview the minister experience, and optionally require SPC applicants to attend the annual Board of Ministry interviews. The Manual-required questions and minister-profile section remain protected so local customization cannot remove required information. Districts may send applications to current SPC ministers and potential first-time applicants, but an email invitation is no longer required. A minister with a linked NazTrack account can sign in from a church page and select Tools, District Tools, then Request Special Status. NazTrack opens that minister's district application, prefills information from the minister record, and allows the minister to save a draft, update profile information, electronically sign, and submit. Minister-initiated and district-invited applications appear together in the district's SPC application registry without creating duplicate annual applications.

Discovered a bug where studies committee chairs could not manage candidates or add new candidates. This has been resolved.

District administrators can now track initial setup in the Onboarding Portal. The checklist covers churches, ministers, boards, and district settings, unlocking steps as prerequisites are completed.

NazTrack tracks who runs a church through the assignment role code on a minister's record. A PAS (Pastor) or PASPAC (Pastor of a Parent-Affiliated Congregation) assignment has always automatically granted that minister's login Church Admin access — the ability to manage their church's account. Those two codes are reserved for credentialed clergy: an ordained elder or a district-licensed minister on the elder track, per denominational polity. The LAY role code covers a much broader group than PAS or PASPAC does. It is used for any lay minister a district has commissioned for specialized ministry — church planters, bivocational or supply pastors, teachers, lay evangelists, lay song evangelists, stewardship ministers, and lay church staff ministers can all share the single LAY code. Most are not functioning as their church's pastor at all, so the assignment alone was never a safe signal to grant Church Admin access, and until now no lay-coded assignment carried that access, no matter what the minister was actually doing at the church. That was a problem for districts that appoint a lay minister to lead a church in a genuine pastoral capacity. That minister needed to run their church day to day but had no way to get the access a PAS or PASPAC assignment would have given them automatically. Assignments with the LAY role code now have a 'Serving as lay pastor of this church' checkbox. Checking it grants that minister's login the same Church Admin access a PAS or PASPAC assignment grants, without changing their recorded credential type — they remain correctly recorded as a Lay minister, since NazTrack still needs to reflect their actual denominational standing for district and assembly reporting. Leave the box unchecked for every other LAY assignment, since checking it grants church administration access the minister does not need for those roles.

Advisory board ballots now require motion text. When motion comments are left blank, NazTrack asks the user to confirm before creating the ballot and reminds them that a ballot cannot be modified once opened.

Board of Ministry now tracks the district-license knowledge requirements described in Manual paragraph 524.1(2). Each district begins with History and Polity of the Church of the Nazarene and Doctrine of Holiness requirements. Requirements may be satisfied by designated course completions or by Studies Committee transcript review.

There are three main ways that a church name is saved in NazTrack. Official Name: is the church’s formal name in denominational records (eg. Smithville Grace) Preferred name: The shorter or familiar name shown throughout NazTrack. What the church is actually called at the local and district context. (eg. Grace Church) Legal name: The name of the incorporated entity used on legal and financial documents. (eg. Smithville Grace Church of the Nazarene, inc.) The application was frequently displaying the official name when it should have been displaying the preferred name. Many parts of NazTrack were changed to fix this. If you see unusual or inconsistent naming in the application, please let us now.

A Minister in Training's course level is now stored on their Board of Ministry MIT/candidate record instead of their minister record. This keeps course of study progress with the candidacy process where it is managed.

Fixed an issue that prevented district administrators from adding more members to the Board of Ministry. The member picker now shows eligible ordained district ministers who are not already active board members.

Boards of Ministry can now send district license applications to one or many eligible candidates by email. Each candidate receives a private, expiring link, completes the application online, and signs it electronically. Submitted applications and their signature records are available to authorized Board of Ministry members in NazTrack.

District administrators can now record a birthday for a minister’s spouse and add any number of children with their birthdays. Spouse and child birthdays also appear on the district’s monthly Birthdays & Anniversaries page.

District administrators can now set or change a minister’s membership church directly from the Minister Membership Access section of the District Admin Portal. Changes save immediately and synchronize Church User access for the minister’s linked user account.

District administrators can now queue welcome emails for every minister user who has never logged in with one action. Each recipient receives a unique temporary password, and the existing email queue handles delivery.

District staff can compose an email once and send it directly to one or more automatically maintained audiences, including church leaders, district boards, credentialed ministers, assignment-based audiences, ministry candidates, and the district’s configured coordinator levels. NazTrack removes duplicate email addresses when a person belongs to more than one selected audience. Messages support a custom From name, Reply-To address, and common document or image attachments.

NazTrack now has a public changelog for release notes, feature announcements, and practical guidance about system updates. Church and district stakeholders can subscribe separately to the changes relevant to them, while system-wide changes are included for both audiences. Subscribers can choose daily updates or a weekly digest and can manage or end their subscription without logging in.