Board of Ministry
The Board of Ministry module is where your district keeps the credentialing record for every minister candidate: who is on the board, who the candidates are, what coursework they have finished, what they have applied for, how their interviews went, and what the district assembly decided. This page walks through all of it in the order you are most likely to need it.
NazTrack copies the applicable Manual and district requirement definitions into each cycle. The copied label, instructions, Manual reference, owner, stage, confidentiality, and due date remain unchanged even if the district later retires or edits its definition.
The Requirements sections under Settings preview definitions by workflow. A new district requirement applies automatically to later cycles; applying it to selected open cycles is a separate action that requires a reason and records an event. Pastor letters belong here only when your district adds them.
Conditional requirements may be marked not applicable only when their defined condition is absent and a reason is recorded. A mandatory Manual requirement can be waived only through the exact exception and authority named on that definition, with evidence, approver role, decision, and rationale.
Some requirements are verified from the candidate's record instead of by hand. For example, Current district minister's license verified is marked Verified as soon as the candidate's District License History has an Active license. These are checked again whenever that part of the record changes, including when you add, edit, import, or delete a license record.
Existing Studies Committee gate reviews are linked as evidence rather than copied into a second education-review process. Candidate submission remains available with pending items. Each requirement begins blocking when its listed stage is reached: Application, Before Interview, and Before Recommendation items must be resolved before a favorable BOM recommendation; Before Assembly items are added before an approved assembly action; and After Assembly items block neither decision.
Applications that already had a recorded BOM recommendation when cycle checklists were introduced keep their backfilled checklist for reference. Pending backfilled items do not retroactively block the assembly action. Any requirement the district explicitly applies afterward follows the normal stage rules.
Open an application and click Documents. In Cycle Documents, choose a file under the document you received and click Upload. The document type, title, and requirement are filled in automatically. Use Upload another document for other paperwork, or Upload replacement beside an existing file. PDF, Word, and JPG/PNG files up to 10 MB are accepted. The Document Review tab gathers pending files across candidates.
Reviewers either verify the current version or request a replacement with a candidate-visible reason. Verification updates the linked requirement. A verified file is never overwritten: corrections are uploaded as a new version, and every earlier version remains downloadable in the history.
Sensitive documents have a separate permission from ordinary document viewing. Download and preview routes enforce the district and sensitive boundary directly; PDF and image previews use private no-store responses, and Word files download instead of opening inline.
Form 814 is recorded as structured data on the district-license application: recommending body, requested action, role code, ministry-focus explanation when required, board vote date, both officer certifications, and dated district superintendent permission for PSV-FT or PSV-PT. A signed scan may be attached as supporting evidence, but it does not replace these fields.
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.
Issued by the candidate's local church board. This is where candidacy begins. In NazTrack you record the date it was issued and the church that issued it on the candidate record.
Granted by the district assembly on the board's recommendation. The candidate normally must have held a local license for at least a year and completed the coursework your district requires first. The district license is renewed each year for as long as the candidate is working toward ordination.
Granted by the district assembly after the candidate has finished the course of study or an approved degree and has served in an assigned ministry. Ministers ordained in another denomination can instead be brought in through recognition of credentials.
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.
| Tab | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Candidates | Everyone the board is currently tracking toward a credential. This is the starting page for the module and the way in to each candidate's coursework, applications, and interviews. |
| BOM Roster | The members of the board itself, their board roles, and their terms. |
| SPC Ministers | Ministers holding a district-approved special service assignment, and their annual renewal applications and interviews. |
| Recommendations | The assembly-year worksheet: everything the board has voted on, ready to present and to record the assembly's action against. |
| Divorcees | Active candidates with a recorded prior divorce, so the board can track whether the barrier has been lifted and keep the approval document on file. |
| Course Catalog | The regional courses of study, which courses count toward your district's license requirements, and which course of study is available to new candidates. |
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.
| What you want to do | Access needed |
|---|---|
| See the candidate list and each candidate's record | BOM Member (or higher) |
| Add candidates, edit candidate details, archive and reactivate | BOM Secretary, BOM Chair, or District Admin |
| Approve or deny transcript courses submitted for review | Studies Committee Member or Studies Committee Chair |
| Configure the course catalog and license requirements | BOM Chair or District Admin |
| Send application invitations and manage applications | BOM Secretary, BOM Chair, or District Admin |
| Record interview outcomes | BOM Member (or higher) |
| Read confidential interview questions, answers, and committee notes | A role that has been granted interview notes access specifically |
| Record the BOM recommendation and the assembly's action | BOM Secretary, BOM Chair, or District Admin |
| Add or remove board members | BOM Chair or District Admin |
| Set up and send special service applications | District Advisory Board admin, BOM Chair, or District Admin |
| Submit your own transcripts and application | The candidate themselves, signed in to their own account |
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.
- Go to Board of Ministry and choose BOM Roster.
- Click Add Member.
- Choose the person. Their email is filled in from their user account.
- Choose their board role. This is the setting that grants access, so choose carefully.
- Optionally adjust the display name and enter the years their term starts and ends.
- 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.
| Board role | What it means |
|---|---|
| Chair | Leads the board. Full access to every part of the module, including candidate records, applications, interviews and notes, and the course catalog. |
| Secretary | Keeps the board's records. Manages candidates, sends and processes applications, and records interviews, recommendations, and assembly actions. |
| Studies Committee Chair | Leads the review of coursework taken outside the regional course of study, and can approve or deny submitted courses. |
| Studies Committee Member | Reviews transcripts and approves or denies submitted courses. |
| Member | Participates in interviews and can see candidates and applications. |
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
- Go to Candidates and click Add Candidate.
- Select the minister from the list.
- Enter the date their local license was issued and the church that issued it.
- 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.
| On the page | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Local license date | The date and how long ago it was, with a note once the one-year mark is passed or a countdown until it is. |
| Issuing church and membership church | The church that granted the local license, and where the candidate currently holds membership. |
| Course of study level | Year One through Year Four, or Graduated. Graduated is what the ordination readiness check looks for. |
| Ministry track | Elder, deacon, or district license only, meaning the candidate is not pursuing ordination. |
| Divorce barrier | Whether a prior divorce is recorded and whether the barrier has been lifted, with a link to the approval document. |
| Courses, Applications, Interviews | The three counters. Click any of them to open that part of the candidate's record. |
| Background checks | Files you have uploaded for this candidate. Add one with an optional title. PDF, Word, or an image, up to 10 MB each. |
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.
Someone is either an active candidate or they are not. There is no separate status to keep up to date: Archive is how you end someone's time as a candidate, and Reactivate is how you bring them back.
While a candidate is active, they:
- appear on the Candidates list
- can sign in to their own candidate portal
- can be sent district license and ordination applications
- receive emails sent to the Ministry Candidates audience
- are counted on the Board of Ministry dashboard
Archiving takes all of that away at once. They come off the list, their portal closes, and they can no longer be sent applications. Nothing is lost: their coursework, applications, interviews, and documents all stay exactly as they were, and Reactivate restores both the record and their access. Candidate records are never deleted.
Archive a candidate when they withdraw, when the board removes them, or when they transfer to another district. You do not need to archive someone who has just been ordained: when the assembly approves an ordination, NazTrack archives them for you, because they have finished the process.
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.
- Give the requirement a name, such as Nazarene History and Polity, and a short description if it helps.
- 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.
- Set a display order and leave it active.
- 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 met by hand on a candidate's coursework page: set Requirement Met to Yes, add a date and a note, and click Save Review. Use this for coursework the board accepted outside the normal record, or for a requirement that is not a course at all, such as a district orientation class. Leave a requirement with no courses ticked if it can only be met this way.
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:
| Method | What happens |
|---|---|
| NCOS | Taken through the current regional course of study. Counted as completed straight away, with no review needed. |
| MCOS | Taken through the older modular course of study. Also counted straight away. Record the original course title so the equivalency is clear later. |
| External | Taken somewhere else, such as a seminary or Bible college. Held as Pending Review until the Studies Committee approves or denies it. |
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. The Studies Committee records the program, institution, completion date, and transcript verification there.
Tick 25% of Course of Study Verified by Transcript when the transcript establishes the educational progress required for a first district license. This does not indicate that the candidate has graduated.
Tick Graduation Verified by Transcript after the transcript confirms graduation. NazTrack then also records the candidate's course of study level as Graduated for ordination readiness and treats the earlier 25% milestone as satisfied.
Every new application belongs to one candidate's cycle for a recorded district Assembly. Create the Assembly before opening or sending applications for that year. NazTrack selects the next upcoming, non-finalized Assembly by default, and staff can select another recorded Assembly.
A cycle can contain more than one ordered application. Under Settings, use Workflow defaults to choose whether ordination normally stands alone or follows a district-license renewal in the same cycle.
For renewal then ordination, choose whether the ordination application unlocks after renewal submission, the renewal interview, or a favorable renewal BOM recommendation. A license granted at the same Assembly is not an unlock option.
Staff confirm the workflow when creating or sending an application. Initial license, ordinary renewal, recognition, and an incoming licensed minister use explicit profiles, so NazTrack does not decide the annual path only from the minister's current credential.
Workflow defaults under Settings stores separate district defaults for district-license and ordination applications. A manager can correct an individual cycle's workflow from a draft application, but the workflow is locked once any application in the cycle is submitted.
To be ordained, a minister needs three years of assigned ministry. Districts handle part-time associate service differently, so each district chooses. Open Settings, then use the Part-time service credit section to pick one option:
- Full credit: part-time service counts the same as full-time service. This is the default.
- Credit by weekly hours: part-time service earns part of a year, based on the weekly hours recorded on the minister's PSV-PT assignment and a credit table you set up.
- Case by case: part-time service is not counted automatically. NazTrack shows it separately so the board can decide how much it counts for each candidate.
Each row of the weekly-hours table means: at least this many hours a week earns this much credit for each year served. Enter 1.00 for a full year or 0.50 for half a year. For example:
| At least this many hours a week | Credit per year served |
|---|---|
| 5 | 0.50 |
| 10 | 0.60 |
| 15 | 0.75 |
| 20 | 1.00 |
With that table, a minister working 12 hours a week gets 0.60 of a year for each year served, and someone working 4 hours a week gets no credit. The highest row a minister qualifies for applies. To remove a row, clear both boxes and save.
As you type, the Applies to column shows the range of weekly hours each row covers, such as 5–9 hours or 20 or more hours, and a note below the table shows which hours get no credit. Check that these match your district's policy before saving.
Each candidate's page has an Assigned Ministry Service Credit card listing every dated assignment with its years served, weekly hours, credit factor, and service credit, followed by the total, the years required, and the years remaining. The same total drives the three-years item in the ordination readiness checklist.
- If a minister's weekly hours changed, end the old PSV-PT assignment and start a new one with the new hours so each period is credited correctly.
- Under Credit by weekly hours, a PSV-PT assignment with no weekly hours recorded, including historical assignments, gets no credit. The card points this out.
- If two assignments overlap, each day is counted once, at the higher credit.
- Full-time and other assignments always count as full time.
Some districts require candidates to attend a Ministerial Candidate Workshop: some before granting a first district license, some before ordination, some both. This setting is optional and is off unless you turn it on.
To set it up, open Settings and find the Ministerial Candidate Workshop section:
- Tick Our district requires the Ministerial Candidate Workshop (MCW).
- Tick Required before granting a district license, Required before ordination, or both. You must pick at least one.
- Click Save MCW settings.
To record that a candidate attended, open the candidate and scroll to the Ministerial Candidate Workshop card below Background Checks. Tick Candidate has attended the Ministerial Candidate Workshop (MCW), enter the Date attended if you know it (the date is optional), and click Save MCW attendance. The card then shows whether the candidate has attended, and the date when recorded. The same checkbox and date are also on the candidate's Edit page.
Once it is on, MCW becomes one of the readiness checks on the Send Applications page for the application type you chose. A candidate who has not attended shows a warning there, the same way other missing requirements do. As with every readiness check, the warning is information only and does not stop you sending the application.
- Turning the setting off hides the MCW section on candidate pages and removes the check, but keeps any attendance you already recorded. Turning it back on brings it back.
- Unticking a candidate's attendance also clears the date.
- Recognition applications (ministers ordained in another denomination) are not checked for MCW.
| Type | When to use it |
|---|---|
| District License | A candidate's first application for a district minister's license. They declare on the form whether they are heading toward elder, toward deacon, or toward a district license without ordination. |
| Annual Review | The yearly re-examination for as long as the candidate holds a district license. |
| Ordination | Application for ordination. The candidate chooses elder or deacon on the form itself. |
| Recognition of Credentials | For a minister ordained in another denomination. Your staff choose whether the recognition is for elder or deacon before sending. |
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.
- Go to Candidates and click Send Applications.
- Choose District License, Ordination, or Recognition of Credentials. For recognition, also choose whether it is for elder or deacon.
- Confirm the assembly-year workflow and select a recorded district Assembly.
- Choose English or Spanish. This sets the language of both the email and the application form.
- Tick one candidate for a single email, or several for a batch.
- Edit the subject, the instructions, and an optional due date.
- 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 link also stops working if the application is withdrawn, its assembly-year cycle is closed, or the assembly is finalized. Withdrawing an application revokes its open link automatically.
- 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.
- The candidate has attended the Ministerial Candidate Workshop, if your district requires it before a district license.
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 three years of assigned ministry credit behind it. How part-time service counts depends on your district's Part-time service credit setting.
- There is no unresolved divorce barrier.
- The candidate has attended the Ministerial Candidate Workshop, if your district requires it before ordination. This is not checked for recognition.
Historical assignments can supply dated service from before the minister or district used NazTrack, including service at a closed church. Add them from the minister's Assignment History using Historical Organization. Both a start and end date are required before a historical assignment contributes to recorded ministry time. Historical assignments never satisfy the separate requirement for a current ministry assignment.
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.
- Open the candidate and click Applications.
- Click Create Application.
- Choose the type, assembly-year workflow, and recorded district Assembly.
- Tick the prerequisites that are already satisfied and enter their dates.
- 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.
| Status | Meaning | Can move next to |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Being prepared. The checklist is still live. | Submitted |
| Submitted | Formally before the board. The checklist snapshot is taken. | Interview Scheduled, Deferred, Withdrawn |
| Interview Scheduled | An appointment has been recorded. | Interviewed, Deferred, Withdrawn |
| Interviewed | The interview has taken place. | Recommended, Not Recommended, Deferred |
| Recommended | The board is recommending the candidate to the assembly. | Approved by Assembly, Denied by Assembly |
| Not Recommended | The board is not recommending the candidate. | Approved by Assembly, Denied by Assembly |
| Deferred | Postponed. The board will come back to it. | Interview Scheduled |
| Withdrawn | Withdrawn by the candidate or the board. | Nothing further |
| Approved by Assembly | The assembly approved the board's recommendation. Final. | Nothing further |
| Denied by Assembly | The assembly denied the board's recommendation. Final. | Nothing further |
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.
Interview decisions require a reason. Granting or denying an interview records the decision without creating a schedule or a vote. Interview Not Required moves the application to Interviewed. The generic status control permits only reasoned withdrawal.
Assembly-Year Cycles
Board of Ministry opens to the next relevant assembly. Filter cycles by workflow, application/status, outstanding owner, interview date/committee, or action needed. Sort by candidate or due date.
Select applications for invitations, daily reminders, scheduling, reports, or assembly actions. Each application is checked independently and failures identify the affected record.
Open a cycle to see applications, requirements, documents, interviews, formal recommendations, assembly actions, and activity together. Completed applications start collapsed; ordination shows its renewal prerequisite.
Schedule approximate arrival times using district-local dates and times, meeting instructions, and candidate-visible notes. Record the committee and members present after the interview. Candidates can confirm in their cycle portal. Rescheduling clears confirmation and queues a new notification while preserving history.
The interview-day agenda groups appointments by date and location, then lists them by time. Unlinked older interviews remain under Historical Interviews.
An interview session is one date and location where the board holds interviews for an assembly. Some districts hold a single session at one place. Others hold several, for example one in each region, or a separate day for ordination candidates.
- Open Assembly-Year Cycles, choose the assembly year, and click Interview sessions.
- Click Add session.
- Enter the date and the location. For an online session, enter the meeting instructions instead of an address.
- If your district uses church groupings, choose Who can sign up: the whole district, or a grouping at any level, such as a region or a zone. Only candidates whose membership church is in that grouping, or in a smaller grouping inside it, are offered the session. A candidate whose membership church has no grouping is offered every session.
- Check every kind of interview held at this session: District License, Ordination, Divorce Barrier, or Special Service. Any combination is allowed, but at least one must be checked.
- Save.
Use Edit to change a session. If a session will not happen, click Cancel session. It moves to the Cancelled sessions list and can be brought back with Restore. Once the assembly is finalized, its sessions can no longer be changed.
Anyone who can view interviews can see the sessions. Adding, editing, or cancelling a session requires permission to manage interviews.
- On Interview sessions, click Time slots beside a session.
- Enter the start and end time, in the district's time zone.
- Optionally add a label, such as En Español for a Spanish-language committee.
- Enter how many candidates can sign up for the slot.
- For time that cannot be booked, such as a dinner break, check This is a break instead. Breaks have no candidate count.
- Click Save time slot.
Times are approximate. If multiple candidates may arrive at once, give the slot enough openings or add parallel slots.
Slots are listed in time order with the total number of candidate openings. Use Edit to change a slot or Remove to take it off the session. Once the assembly is finalized, its time slots can no longer be changed.
Once a session has time slots, candidates choose their own interview time from their Board of Ministry page. A candidate is offered a session when all of these are true:
- Their application has been submitted, the interview has not been denied or marked not required, and any documents due before the interview have been reviewed.
- The session interviews their kind of application. District License covers district license and annual review applications; Ordination covers ordination and recognition applications. Divorce Barrier sessions are also offered to candidates whose divorce barrier has not been lifted.
- The session is open to their church grouping.
- The session date is still in the future.
- The session has at least one time slot that is not a break.
While a requirement due before the interview is still open, the candidate's page lists it under Interview times are not open to you yet instead of offering a time.
When a candidate picks a time, NazTrack creates their interview appointment, marks it confirmed, sets the application to Interview Scheduled, and emails them the details. It appears in the cycle's Interviews section marked Session time slot and on the Interview schedule by date, location, and approximate arrival time. The committee is recorded after the interview. Full slots and breaks cannot be chosen.
Candidates can change to another time or cancel their own sign-up until the day before the session. After that they must contact the district. An appointment the district scheduled can only be changed by the district.
The Time slots page lists who has signed up for each slot and how many places remain. While candidates are signed up, a slot cannot be removed, turned into a break, or given a different time, and its candidate count cannot go below the number already signed up. A session cannot be cancelled or moved to a different date; changing its location updates the signed-up candidates' appointments too.
If you reschedule a signed-up candidate to a different time, they no longer hold a place in the original slot.
Staff with permission to manage interviews can handle any appointment from the Interviews section of the candidate's Assembly-Year Cycle page. When an application has no appointment yet, it shows these buttons:
- Book a session time: choose a time slot on the candidate's behalf, for example when a candidate is having trouble signing up. Every upcoming session for the assembly is listed, including sessions the candidate would not normally be offered; those are marked Not normally offered to this candidate. Full slots and breaks cannot be chosen; if you need more room, raise the slot's candidate count on its Time slots page. The candidate is emailed the appointment and confirms it from their Board of Ministry page.
- Schedule a custom time: enter a custom date, time, and location for an interview that is not part of a session. Record Interview is also there for an interview that was held without an appointment.
Under each appointment in the Interviews section:
- Reschedule moves the appointment to a different time slot, in the same session or another one. For a time outside any session, click Use a custom date and time instead on that page to change the date, time, location, or notes by hand. If the new time no longer matches a session time slot, the appointment gives up its place in that slot.
- Cancel appointment removes an appointment that has not been held yet. Add an optional message, and leave Email the candidate checked to let them know. The application goes back to Submitted, and the cancelled appointment's details stay in the cycle's activity history. An interview that has already been recorded cannot be cancelled.
The candidate receives an email whenever staff book, change, or reschedule their appointment.
You can do all of this from the Interview schedule page too. Its Needs an interview time list shows every application for the assembly that is ready for an interview but has no appointment yet, with Book a session time and Schedule a custom time buttons. Each appointment on the schedule has the same Reschedule, Record Interview, and Cancel appointment actions as the cycle page. When you finish, you are returned to the Interview schedule.
- Open the candidate’s Assembly-Year Cycle, expand the application, and click Record Interview.
- The application is fixed by the link. The cycle must be open and its renewal prerequisite satisfied.
- Enter the date of the interview.
- Enter the committee that actually conducted the interview. Session committee names are suggested, or you can enter another name.
- Choose the committee outcome. Saving the interview does not record a formal BOM vote.
- Add the interview questions with the candidate's answers and any committee comments, one row at a time.
- Tick every board member who took part.
- 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.
| Application type | Available recommendations |
|---|---|
| District License | Grant first district license, renew district license, deny license, or defer. |
| Annual Review | Renew district license, deny license, or defer. |
| Ordination | Recommend elder ordination, recommend deacon ordination, renew district license, deny license, or defer. |
| Recognition of Credentials | Recommend elder ordination, recommend deacon ordination, or defer. |
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.
- A licence term is added to the candidate's district-license history for that assembly year, running to the following year's assembly, and any earlier active term is marked superseded.
- On renewal, the outgoing term's expiration date and the new term's issued date are both set to the assembly action date, so the history remains continuous without an artificial gap.
- Ordination readiness uses the latest uninterrupted sequence in this history rather than inferring continuous licensure from a first-license date.
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.
| What you see | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | The annual written application has not been submitted yet. |
| Required | Your district requires an interview and it has not been recorded. |
| Renew Special Assignment | The board recommended renewal. |
| Deny Renewal | The board recommended against renewal. |
| Defer Decision | The board postponed the decision. |
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.
- Choose, change, or cancel their own interview time when the district has opened interview sessions for them.
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.
Candidates see their current application directly on their own Board of Ministry page. If a candidate is signed in and looking at their church, they switch to the district first using the context selector, then choose Board of Ministry.
Only the current open application process is shown. Past assembly years are not displayed to the candidate. The current application area shows:
- Every application in that cycle and where each one currently stands.
- The documents the candidate has been asked to provide, with any due dates.
- A form for sending a document in, and the list of what they have already sent.
- Whether each submitted document is awaiting review, accepted, or has had a replacement requested, together with the reason the reviewer gave.
- Their Assigned Ministry Service Credit: each dated assignment with its weekly hours and credit, the total, and the years remaining. When the district credits part-time service by weekly hours, the card also lists the hour ranges and their credit.
When a reviewer asks for a replacement, the candidate is emailed straight away with the reason given, and a Send Replacement box appears beside that document on their Board of Ministry page. What they upload there becomes the next version of the same document rather than a second separate file, so the original and the reason it was rejected both stay on the record. Verifying a document does not email anyone, since nothing is being asked of the candidate.
Candidates only ever see their own current application process, and only documents marked standard. Anything the board holds as sensitive, anything from a past assembly year, and anything belonging to another candidate is not shown on this page.
Missing documents do not stop a candidate submitting their application. The page simply keeps showing what is still outstanding.
When a candidate sends in a document, the board is emailed straight away. That email names the document title and links to the candidate's record; it never contains the document itself.
- 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.