The Board of Ministry is the group of ordained ministers your district assembly elects to oversee everyone working toward a ministerial credential. The board reviews each candidate's education, interviews them, and brings a recommendation to the district assembly, which makes the final decision.

NazTrack does not make any of those decisions for you. It keeps the record: the paperwork, the dates, the coursework, the interview outcomes, and the assembly's action. Everything the module calculates is there to tell you what the record currently shows, not to approve or block anyone.

Two different groups of people are tracked here. Candidates are working toward a district license or ordination. Special service ministers already hold a credential and renew a district-approved assignment each year. They are handled separately and are covered further down this page.

When the assembly approves an application, NazTrack updates the minister's credential automatically. You do not need to go edit the minister record separately.

Choose Board of Ministry in the district menu. Across the top of every page in the module you will see the same row of tabs. Which ones appear depends on your permissions.

Candidates who have their own NazTrack sign-in see a single Board of Ministry page instead of these tabs. It shows only their own record.

Access is granted by role. In most districts you do not assign these by hand: adding someone to the BOM Roster with a board role gives them the matching access automatically, and removing them takes it away again.

Interview notes are deliberately separate from everything else. Someone can be allowed to see that an interview happened, on what date, and what the board recommended, without being able to read what was said in the room. If you need access you do not have, ask your district administrator.

Before you can add someone to the roster, three things must already be true about them in NazTrack:

• They have a minister record on your district that is not archived.
• Their credential is Ordained Elder or Ordained Deacon. Licensed and local ministers cannot be added.
• Their minister record is linked to a NazTrack user account, so the board role can actually give them access.

If the person you want is missing from the list, one of those three is the reason. Fix it on their minister record first and then come back.

1. Go to Board of Ministry and choose BOM Roster.
2. Click Add Member.
3. Choose the person. Their email is filled in from their user account.
4. Choose their board role. This is the setting that grants access, so choose carefully.
5. Optionally adjust the display name and enter the years their term starts and ends.
6. Save.

A minister can only be on the roster once. If they are already there, edit the existing entry instead of adding a second one.

Changing someone's board role replaces their old access with the access for the new role. Removing them from the roster takes the access away entirely but keeps their history, including which interviews they sat in on.

Executive committee service is recorded with its own checkbox rather than as a role, so a chair, a secretary, or an ordinary member can all be marked as serving on the executive committee.

If the person already has a minister record

1. Go to Candidates and click Add Candidate.
2. Select the minister from the list.
3. Enter the date their local license was issued and the church that issued it.
4. Save. The candidate record opens, and everything else is tracked from there.

Ministers who are already ordained cannot be added as candidates, and a minister can only have one candidate record on your district.

If the person is new to NazTrack entirely

On the same Add Candidate page, choose Create a new candidate instead of picking from the list. Enter their name and email and NazTrack creates the user account, the minister record, and the candidate record together, refusing any email address that already belongs to someone else. This is the right path for a newly licensed local minister who has never been in the system.

Once the record exists, set the local license date, the ministry track, and the course of study, because those are what the readiness checks and the application checklists read from.

When you create a brand new candidate, NazTrack emails them so they can set a password and sign in. The wording of that message belongs to your district, and you can change it.

From the Add Candidate page, open the welcome email settings and edit the subject, the body, the from name, and the reply-to address. Both a subject and a body are required. Your changes are saved for your district and used for every candidate you create afterward.

The candidate page opens with a candidacy overview and three counters that take you deeper.

Use Edit to change any of the recorded details. The badge beside the candidate's name always tells you which course of study they are on, or warns you that no track has been assigned yet.

Archiving is separate from status. Archiving takes a candidate off the working list without losing anything: their coursework, applications, and interviews all stay exactly as they were, and Reactivate brings them back. Candidate records are never deleted.

Use the status filter on the Candidates page to switch between the active list and the archived one.

If a prior divorce is recorded on a candidate, that candidate appears on the Divorcees tab, and NazTrack treats the barrier as standing until it is marked lifted. While it stands, the district license readiness check reports it as a reason the candidate is not yet ready.

To clear it, mark the barrier lifted and upload the approval document from the General Superintendents. NazTrack requires both together: you cannot mark it lifted without a document on file, and you cannot upload a document without marking it lifted. Once saved, the document can be opened again from the candidate record at any time.

You can do this from the Divorcees tab or from the candidate's own Edit page. Both save to the same place.

Every candidate needs a study track, set on the Edit Candidate form. Until one is chosen, the candidate page shows a warning badge and the coursework page has nothing to show.

• NCOS — The current USA/Canada Region Non-degree Course of Study. Each course in the curriculum is tracked individually. This is the usual choice.
• MCOS — The older Modular Course of Study, kept for candidates who began under it. It is marked deprecated and is normally switched off for new candidates.
• Degree Track — A formal degree program, such as a religion degree from a Nazarene university. Individual courses are not tracked; the board confirms the degree instead.

The track can be changed later if the candidate switches paths. Coursework already recorded stays on their record.

The course catalog is maintained by NazTrack, not by your district. Both regional courses of study are set up for you the first time you open the page, and each course is marked as a NazTrack standard course. There is nothing to load, add, or type in.

Use the selector at the top to switch between the courses of study. For each one you can see the sequence code, the course name, which of your license requirements the course counts toward, and whether it is currently offered to candidates.

The one setting here is Disable Course of Study, which stops a course of study being assigned to new candidates without disturbing anyone already on it. Most districts disable MCOS and leave NCOS enabled.

If the regional catalog looks wrong or incomplete, that is something for NazTrack support rather than something to correct locally.

Districts differ on what a candidate must have completed before applying for a first district license. The License Requirements page, reached from the Course Catalog tab, is where your district writes that down.

1. Give the requirement a name, such as Nazarene History and Polity, and a short description if it helps.
2. Tick every course that satisfies it. Any one of them counts, which is what lets the same requirement be met by the NCOS course or its MCOS equivalent.
3. Set a display order and leave it active.
4. Save. From then on it appears on every candidate's coursework page and in the district license readiness check.

Studies Committee members can also mark a requirement satisfied by hand on a candidate's coursework page, with a date and a note, for coursework the board accepted outside the normal record.

Districts that have not set up any license requirements fall back to the older single Nazarene History and Polity checkbox on the candidate record.

Open a candidate and click Courses. Candidates on a course of study see the whole curriculum grouped by year, with anything outside the numbered sequence listed separately, and a running count of what has been finished.

To record a course, choose it and pick how it was completed:

A completion can be edited or removed later if it was recorded against the wrong course.

Anything recorded as external coursework waits for the Studies Committee. On the candidate's Courses page, each pending course has Approve and Deny buttons, and you can leave a note explaining the decision.

Approved courses count toward the candidate's totals and toward the license requirements they are tied to. Denied courses do not, and stay on the record showing they were reviewed.

Transcripts uploaded by the candidate appear on the same page, so you can read the document and record the decision without leaving it. Committee members are emailed whenever a candidate uploads something new.

A denied course can be resubmitted if the candidate provides more evidence. Ask your district administrator to reopen it.

For a degree track candidate, the Courses page shows the degree instead of a curriculum. Record the program name, the institution, and the graduation date on the Edit Candidate form.

When the board has confirmed the degree, tick Degree completion verified by BOM. NazTrack then also records the candidate's course of study level as Graduated, which is what the ordination readiness check looks for.

Older records may show separate Ordination — Elder and Ordination — Deacon types. They still work exactly as before; new applications simply use the single Ordination type.

1. Go to Candidates and click Send Applications.
2. Choose District License, Ordination, or Recognition of Credentials. For recognition, also choose whether it is for elder or deacon.
3. Choose English or Spanish. This sets the language of both the email and the application form.
4. Tick one candidate for a single email, or several for a batch.
5. Edit the subject, the instructions, and an optional due date.
6. Click Send Selected Applications and leave the page open until it finishes.

Sending happens one candidate at a time with a progress bar. If an address fails, that one is reported and the rest still go, so you never have to start over.

A candidate with no email address on their minister record cannot be sent an application. Add the address first.

• Each link belongs to one candidate and one application. It cannot be forwarded to someone else and used.
• Links expire 45 days after they are sent.
• A link stops working once the application has been submitted, so nobody can submit twice.
• A candidate can save a draft and come back to the same link as often as they like before submitting.

The invitation history at the bottom of the Send Applications page shows every link you have sent and whether it is still open, already completed, revoked, or expired. The candidate list also flags anyone who already has an open invitation, so you do not send a duplicate by accident.

If a link went to the wrong address, revoke it immediately. Revoking closes it at once, and you can then send a fresh one.

The ordination and recognition questionnaire follows the General Secretary's official English and Spanish forms. The opening questions are common to both paths, a further group appears only for ordination, and another only for recognition. The candidate can switch between English and Spanish at any point without losing what they have entered or changing which application they are filling in.

On submission NazTrack captures the signature record: the exact consent wording the candidate agreed to, the legal name they typed, their email address, the date and time, their IP address, and their browser. The candidate can print or save their own copy, and board members with application access can see the completed application together with its signature record.

Once submitted, an application can no longer be edited. That is deliberate, because the submitted version is the record the board reviews.

For a district license, NazTrack checks:

• The local license has been held for at least a year. A minister whose credential is already Licensed satisfies this automatically, and where the original date is not available an administrator can tick the verification box on the candidate record instead.
• Every active license requirement your district has configured is met. Districts with none configured fall back to the Nazarene History and Polity checkbox.
• At least six courses are completed or approved, for candidates on a course of study. Degree track candidates are not counted this way.
• Any recorded divorce barrier has been lifted.

For ordination and recognition, NazTrack checks:

• A current district license is recorded.
• The first district license was at least three years ago.
• The ministry track on the candidate record matches the order being requested.
• The course of study is recorded as Graduated, or a degree has been verified.
• There is a current ministry assignment, with roughly three years of dated assignment history behind it.
• There is no unresolved divorce barrier.

Some requirements cannot be checked from data at all, so NazTrack lists them as items for the district to confirm: the local church or District Advisory Board recommendation, a favourable board examination, the marriage relationship, and any other disqualification. Recognition candidates additionally need their prior ordination papers and verified study of the Manual, Nazarene history, and the doctrine of holiness.

A recorded Graduated level is treated as authoritative even if your district does not track every individual course in NazTrack. Missing course records in that situation are shown as a note rather than a warning. The checks summarise the requirements in the 2023 Manual, paragraphs 525.3, 526.3, and 527.

You do not have to send an online application. From a candidate's Applications page you can create one directly, which is what you want for a paper application or for recording something that happened before your district started using NazTrack.

1. Open the candidate and click Applications.
2. Click Create Application.
3. Choose the type and the assembly year.
4. Tick the prerequisites that are already satisfied and enter their dates.
5. Save. The application starts as a draft, and you can keep updating it.

Why submitting matters

While an application is a draft, its checklist reflects the live record. Approve a course today and the draft updates on its own. The moment you submit, NazTrack freezes a snapshot of the checklist exactly as it stood, and that snapshot is the permanent record of what was true when the candidate applied, even if dates or course statuses change afterward.

The tracked prerequisites are the age of the local license, completed coursework and license requirements, the local church board's recommendation, the pastor's letter, and a cleared criminal background check.

NazTrack only offers the moves that make sense from where the application currently is, which is why an interviewed application cannot jump straight to an assembly decision. In most districts the secretary drives this from the application page.

There is a shortcut worth knowing. On a submitted or deferred application, recording the interview decision moves it for you: granting an interview sets it to Interview Scheduled, deciding no interview is required sets it to Interviewed, and denying an interview closes it as Not Recommended.

1. Open the candidate and click Interviews, then Record Interview.
2. Choose the application this interview was about. Only applications that have reached Submitted or beyond are offered.
3. Enter the date of the interview.
4. Choose the board's recommendation.
5. Add the interview questions with the candidate's answers and any committee comments, one row at a time.
6. Enter the wording to be read at the district assembly, if the board has agreed it.
7. Tick every board member who took part.
8. Save.

The four possible recommendations are Approve, Deny, Defer, and Continue Current License, the last being for an annual review where the candidate carries on as they are without advancing.

Ticking who was present builds an attendance record, which is useful both for the minutes and for showing that quorum was met.

An interview record holds two very different kinds of text, and NazTrack treats them differently.

• The assembly recommendation — The formal wording the district secretary reads out when presenting the board's recommendation. It is not confidential and may be shared with the candidate.
• The questions, answers, and committee notes — The board's private deliberations. These are visible only to people who have specifically been granted interview notes access.

The separation is intentional. Someone allowed to look up a candidate's status, such as a pastor, can see that an interview took place and what was recommended, without being able to read what was said. If you need notes access and do not have it, ask your district administrator.

Recording the recommendation on an application is what puts it in front of the assembly. NazTrack only offers the actions that make sense for that type of application.

Recording a recommendation also sets the application's status: deferring makes it Deferred, denying makes it Not Recommended, and everything else makes it Recommended.

An application the assembly has already finalised cannot be given a new recommendation.

The Recommendations tab gathers every application the board has voted on for a given assembly year, grouped by what is being recommended, alongside the special service interviews for the same year. It opens on the current year and you can move to another. This is the page to work from while the assembly is in session.

You can record the assembly's action on each item individually, or, when the assembly approves the report as a whole, enter the action date once and approve everything still outstanding for that year in a single step. Anything already finalised is left untouched.

Recording an assembly action needs an action date, and an application must already carry a board recommendation before the assembly's decision can be recorded against it.

This is the part that saves the most work, and the part worth understanding before you click. Recording an approval does more than close out the application.

When a district license is granted or renewed

• The minister's credential is set to Licensed and they are marked as clergy.
• If no first district license date was on record, the assembly action date is used, along with your district.
• A licence term is created for that assembly year, running to the following year's assembly, and any earlier active term is marked superseded.

When an ordination is approved

• The minister's credential is set to Ordained Elder or Ordained Deacon.
• The ordination date is set to the assembly action date, and your district is recorded as the ordaining district. For a recognition, the original ordination date the minister gave on their application is kept instead.
• The candidate's status becomes Ordained and any active district licence term is marked superseded.

A denial records the assembly's decision and closes the application without changing the minister's credential.

A special service assignment is district-approved active ministry that is not otherwise provided for, including some service outside the denomination. The minister submits a written application each year describing the assignment and how they remain connected to the Church of the Nazarene. The District Advisory Board approves it in writing each year and the district assembly approves the assignment. A district may also require an annual board interview as a further accountability step.

These ministers are not ordination candidates. They already hold a credential and are not working toward a new one, so they have no candidate record and appear only on the SPC Ministers tab.

Open Application Setup from the SPC Ministers tab. There you can read the questions the Manual requires, preview exactly what the applicant will see, name the form, write your own instructions, and add district-specific questions of your own.

The Manual-required questions and the section that confirms the minister's NazTrack profile cannot be removed. Your own questions sit alongside them.

One setting here changes how the whole tab behaves: whether your district requires special service applicants to attend the annual board interviews. Turn it on and the SPC Ministers list starts tracking interview status for each minister as well. If you ever want to start over, resetting the form restores the standard version.

Use Send Applications to invite everyone currently on a special service assignment, or to pick out ministers applying for the first time. Choose the application year, edit the subject and message, and set an optional due date.

Every recipient must have a user account linked to their minister record. The invitation takes them to the NazTrack sign-in and then straight to their application, and nobody else who is signed in can open it. Their name, contact details, mailing address, and local church membership are filled in from their minister record.

Saving a draft or submitting updates those details back onto the minister record, including their sign-in email if they changed it, while the application keeps its own copy of what was submitted for the district's review.

A minister with a NazTrack account does not have to wait for an invitation. From a church page they can choose Tools, then District Tools, then Request Special Status, and NazTrack opens their district's application for the current year. Going back to that menu reopens the application they already started rather than creating a second one.

The SPC Ministers tab lists everyone on an active special service assignment with the current year's application and, where your district requires it, their interview status.

To record an interview, find the minister and click Record Interview. Confirm the assembly year and the date, choose renew, deny, or defer, add the assembly wording if there is any, add notes if you have notes access, and tick the board members who took part. Only one interview per minister per assembly year can be recorded.

One consequence is worth knowing before you record it. If the board recommended denying the renewal and the assembly approves that recommendation, NazTrack ends the minister's special service assignment as of the assembly action date.

A candidate who has their own NazTrack sign-in sees Board of Ministry in their menu, and it takes them to a page showing only their own record: their progress through the course of study, whether they currently meet the district licence requirements, their district licence application, and everything they have sent the board.

From that page a candidate can:

• Upload a transcript for the Studies Committee to review, with a title and any notes.
• Upload a copy of their local minister's license.
• Ask for a class adjustment, explaining what they are requesting.
• Send a message to either the board chair or the studies committee.
• Start or continue their district license application.

Everything they submit is emailed to the right board members straight away, with a link that takes you directly to their record, and the last twenty requests stay listed on their page so they can see what they have sent.

If a candidate says they cannot see the page, check that their minister record is linked to their user account and that they hold an active candidate record on your district.

The minister I want is missing from the Add Member list.

Board members must be ordained, on your district, not archived, and linked to a NazTrack user account. Check all four on their minister record.

I cannot add someone as a candidate.

Ministers who are already ordained cannot be candidates, and a minister can only have one candidate record on your district. If they already have one, look for it in the archived list.

Why can I not add a course to the catalog?

The regional courses of study are maintained by NazTrack so they stay consistent across districts. What your district controls is which course of study is offered and which courses satisfy your license requirements. If the catalog itself looks wrong, contact NazTrack support.

A candidate is showing warnings. Can they still apply?

Yes. Readiness warnings never block sending an invitation or submitting an application. Keep correcting the underlying record so the board sees an accurate checklist, but the warning itself stops nothing.

The candidate never received their application email.

Check the invitation history for that candidate. If the send failed it is reported there. Confirm the email address on their minister record, then revoke any open invitation and send a fresh one.

A candidate's link has expired.

Links last 45 days. Send a new invitation; any draft the candidate had already saved is still there when they open the new link.

I need to change a submitted application.

Submitted applications are locked on purpose, because the submitted version is what the board reviews and the checklist snapshot belongs to that moment. If something is genuinely wrong, record the correction on the candidate record and note it in the interview record.

I can see the interview but not the notes.

Interview notes need their own access, separate from being able to see interviews at all. Ask your district administrator.

The assembly approved someone but their credential has not changed.

The credential updates when the assembly action is recorded on the application, and only if a board recommendation was recorded first. Open the application and check both are there.

Something else is wrong.

Your district administrator can adjust access and correct most records. For anything that looks like a problem with the regional catalog or with NazTrack itself, contact NazTrack support.