Ministers
The Ministers module is your district's roster of credentialed and licensed ministers. Each minister record tracks identity, contact information, credentials, assignments to churches and the district, and the minister's standing within the denomination. Minister records belong to the district and are managed by district staff. They are separate from the church people database, though a minister record can be linked to a Person record when the minister also attends a local church.
At the top of the minister detail page you will find the minister's name, their profile photo, and a row of action buttons on the right side of the header.
Profile photo
The circular photo on the left displays the minister's current profile image. If no photo has been uploaded yet, a default avatar is shown. Clicking the photo opens the photo upload window. The photo click only works for users with minister management permission.
Archived badge
If a minister record has been archived, a grey "Archived" badge appears next to their name. Archived ministers can still be viewed in full but are excluded from the active minister list.
Back to list
Returns you to the minister list without making any changes.
Edit button
Opens the full edit form for this minister. Shown only to users with minister management permission, and only when the minister is not archived. Archived ministers cannot be edited until they are unarchived.
Transfer Out button
Opens the Transfer Out window to send this minister to another district. Shown only to users with minister management permission, and only when the minister is not archived.
Archive / Unarchive button
Opens a confirmation window to archive or unarchive this minister. Shown only to users with minister management permission.
The Identity & Contact card shows the minister's personal contact information as it is stored on the minister record itself. This data is independent from any linked church Person record, though the two can be compared and synchronized (see below).
Linked Person badge
A green "Yes" badge means this minister record has been linked to a Person in the church people database. A grey "No" badge means the minister is standalone. Linking is optional but enables address syncing and centralizes contact information.
Link to Person button
Appears in the card header when the minister has no linked person and the user has management permission. Clicking it opens the Link to Person window, which lets you search for and select the matching Person record in your district's churches. The link is made through a shared user account, so the minister and person must either already share a user account or one of them must already have one that can be assigned to the other.
Sync from Person button
Appears in the card header when the minister is linked to a person, there are one or more fields where the two records currently disagree, and the user has management permission. Clicking it opens a comparison window where you can choose which fields to copy from the linked Person record into the minister record. Useful after a minister's contact information has been updated in the people database and you want those changes reflected here as well.
Displayed fields
The card displays the following information from the minister record:
- First / Last — The minister's legal name.
- Suffix — Shown when present, e.g., Jr. or PhD.
- Preferred Name — The name the minister actually goes by, if different from their legal first name. For example, a minister whose legal name is Robert but who is known as Robbie would have Robert as First Name and Robbie as Preferred Name. NazTrack displays the preferred name throughout the application where a formal legal name is not required.
- Email — The minister's contact email address.
- Phone — The minister's contact phone number.
- Address — The mailing or physical address stored on the minister record. When the minister is linked to a person with a family record, the sync feature prefers the family's mailing address over the physical address if one is on file.
- Membership Church — The church where this minister holds membership. This is drawn from the minister record directly; if not set there, it falls back to the linked person's church membership information.
Who can view: Any district user with minister view permission.
Who can edit: District users with minister management permission, via the Edit button in the page header.
The Credentials & Status card shows the minister's standing within the district and the denomination. Some fields are conditional and only appear when they are relevant to the minister's credential type.
- District — Which district this minister belongs to.
- Current Assignment — The active assignment role, if one exists. An assignment is considered active when it has no end date.
- Credential — The minister's credential type: Local, Licensed, Ordained Elder, Ordained Deacon, or other. The display uses the human-readable label for each value.
- Course of Study — The training track the minister is enrolled in. Hidden for Ordained Elder and Ordained Deacon, since those credentials indicate training has been completed.
- In Training — Yes or No. Also hidden for ordained credentials.
- Clergy — Yes or No, reflecting whether the minister is classified as clergy.
- Shut-In — Yes or No, indicating whether the minister is homebound and unable to travel to meetings.
- First License Date / First License District — Shown only when the credential type is Licensed. Records when and where the minister's first district license was granted.
- Ordination Date / Ordination District — Shown only when the credential type is Ordained Elder or Ordained Deacon. Records when and where ordination occurred.
Who can view: Any district user with minister view permission.
Who can edit: District users with minister management permission, via the Edit button.
The Assignment History card lists every assignment on record for this minister. Active assignments — those with no end date — appear first, highlighted with a green "Active" badge, followed by past assignments in reverse chronological order.
Each row shows the role, the church or district the minister was assigned to, and the start and end dates. Active assignments show "present" in place of an end date.
If you have management permission, clicking any row in the table opens the assignment window in edit mode, pre-filled with that assignment's data.
Adding an assignment
Click Add Assignment to open the window in add mode. You will choose a role, whether the assignment is to a church or to the district itself, a start date, and an optional end date. Leave the end date blank for an ongoing (active) assignment.
If the minister already has other active assignments, an "End Other Active Assignments" section appears. For assignments in the same organization as the one you are adding, the system ends any conflicting assignment automatically (a pastor leaving one church to take another church, for example). For assignments in different organizations, checkboxes appear so you can optionally close them at the same time.
When the Unassigned role is selected, all active assignments are pre-checked and will be closed when the new assignment is saved, since the Unassigned role means the minister is no longer placed anywhere.
If the dates you enter would overlap an existing assignment at the same organization, the system blocks the save and shows a warning. Adjust the dates and try again.
When an assignment is saved, the system also updates the minister's user account access. If the assignment links the minister to a church, their login is given the appropriate church-level access automatically.
Editing an assignment
Click any existing assignment row to open it in the edit window. In edit mode, only the role, start date, and end date can be changed. The organization (which church or district the assignment belongs to) is locked and cannot be reassigned. An overlap check is still applied when you save.
To close an active assignment, open it in edit mode and enter an end date. When you save an assignment to a church with an end date, the system recalculates whether the minister's login should retain church access.
Deleting an assignment
The Delete button appears at the bottom left of the edit window. Clicking it opens a separate confirmation dialog. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. Only use deletion when an assignment was entered in error. To end an assignment that actually happened, enter an end date rather than deleting it.
Archiving removes a minister from the active minister list and from most district-facing views without deleting their record. The minister's history, credentials, and assignments are all preserved and remain viewable.
When you click Archive, a confirmation window appears. Confirm to archive the record. The Edit and Transfer Out buttons disappear for archived ministers to prevent unintended changes. To make changes to an archived minister you must unarchive them first.
To restore an archived minister, click the Unarchive button and confirm. The minister returns to the active list and all editing functionality is restored.
Note that archiving does not automatically end any assignments. If you want the assignment history to accurately reflect when the minister left, end their active assignments manually before archiving.
Transfer Out is used when a minister is moving to a different district. Initiating a transfer takes several steps automatically, so read the description below before proceeding.
To transfer a minister, click Transfer Out in the page header, choose the destination district from the dropdown, then click the Transfer Out button. The following things happen immediately and simultaneously:
- All of the minister's active assignments are ended as of today.
- If the minister has a linked user account, that account is removed from all church-level roles within your district and from the district role itself.
- The minister record is archived with an end date of today.
- A pending transfer record is created, linking your district to the destination district.
After the transfer is initiated, the minister appears in your district's transfer queue as a pending outgoing transfer. The receiving district will see it in their incoming transfer queue and can accept it, which will bring the minister into their roster.
If a pending transfer for this minister already exists, the system will warn you and will not create a duplicate. Check the transfer queue to see the status of the existing transfer.
Transfer Out is irreversible through the UI. If a transfer was initiated in error, contact district support to resolve it.
Click the profile photo in the page header to open the photo editor. This requires minister management permission.
Drag an image onto the drop zone, or click the drop zone to pick a file. Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG, and WebP. The maximum file size is 2MB.
Once an image is loaded, an interactive crop box appears. Drag to reposition, scroll to zoom. The crop is always square. A circular preview on the right updates in real time as you adjust the crop so you can see exactly how the photo will look in the application.
Click Save Photo to upload. The system saves two versions: a 600×600 large image and a 120×120 thumbnail. The photo in the page header updates immediately without a full page reload.
Click Remove Photo to delete both saved images. This button is only active when a photo currently exists. A confirmation prompt will appear before the photo is removed.
Minister records and church Person records are managed separately, but they can be linked together through a shared user account. Linking is useful when a minister also attends a local church and has a Person record there, because it allows contact details to be kept in sync between the two records.
To link a minister to a person, click "Link to Person" in the Identity & Contact card header (management permission required, and only shown when the minister currently has no linked person). The window opens and automatically searches for people matching the minister's name.
You can type a different name or email into the search field and click Search to refine the results. Each result shows the person's name and email. Click "Link to this person" on the correct result.
The link is established through a shared user account. Here is what happens in each scenario:
- If the minister has a user account but the person does not, the person is assigned the minister's user account.
- If the person has a user account but the minister does not, the minister is assigned the person's user account.
- If they already share the same user account, the link is already in place and you will see an informational message.
- If the minister and person each have a different user account, linking is blocked to prevent cross-contamination. Resolve the user accounts first.
- If the person you selected is already linked to a different minister, linking is also blocked.
If no matching person exists yet, click "Keep unlinked" to close the window without making a change.
When a minister is linked to a Person and the two records have at least one field that differs, the "Sync from Person" button appears in the Identity & Contact card header (management permission required).
Click "Sync from Person" to open the comparison window. The window shows a table with one row for each field that differs between the two records. For each row you can see the current value on the minister record and the value on the linked person record. All differing fields are pre-checked.
Uncheck any field you want to leave as-is on the minister record, then click "Sync Selected Fields" to copy the checked values from the person record into the minister record. The page will reload with the updated information.
Fields that can be synced: First Name, Last Name, Preferred Name, Email, Phone, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, State, and Postal Code.
For the address, the person side of the comparison uses the family's mailing address if one is on file, or the physical address otherwise.
Click the Edit button in the page header to open the full edit form. This requires minister management permission. Archived ministers cannot be edited until they are unarchived.
Identity & Contact Fields
- First Name — Required.
- Last Name — Required.
- Suffix — Optional, e.g., Jr. or PhD.
- Preferred Name — The name the minister actually goes by, if different from their legal first name. For example, Robert who goes by Robbie.
- Membership Church — Choose which church in the district this minister holds membership in. Select the blank option to clear.
- Shut-In — Check if this minister is homebound and unable to attend assembly meetings.
- Email — The minister's contact email. Changing this field triggers additional confirmation logic (see below).
- Phone
- Address Line 1, Line 2, City, State, Postal Code — State expects a 2-letter code.
Credential Fields
- Credential Type — The minister's credential standing (Licensed, Ordained Elder, Ordained Deacon, Local, etc.). The value you choose here controls which other credential fields are enabled.
- Course of Study — The minister's training program.
- First License Date / First License District — Enabled only when Credential Type is Licensed. Disabled and cleared automatically for other credential types.
- Ordination Date / Ordination District — Enabled only when Credential Type is Ordained Elder or Ordained Deacon. Disabled and cleared automatically for Licensed and Local.
The credential field rules enforce denomination-appropriate data: only ordained ministers can have ordination dates, and only licensed ministers can have a first license date. If you switch to a credential type that makes a field irrelevant, that field is disabled and its value is cleared automatically.
Changing the email address
If you change the email field and submit the form, the system checks whether a minister in another district already uses that email address (since minister email addresses are tied to user accounts across the system).
If no conflict exists and the email change is new, a confirmation dialog appears asking whether you want to send the minister a welcome email. The welcome email provides login instructions and a temporary password, and requires the minister to reset their password at next login. Choose "Yes" if this is the minister's first time receiving NazTrack access at this address, or "No" to update the email silently.
Cross-district email conflict
If the email you entered already belongs to a minister in a different district, a special window appears identifying that minister by name and district. At this point no changes have been saved.
You have two choices: click Cancel to return to the edit form and choose a different email, or click "Request Transfer" to send a transfer request to the other district asking them to transfer that minister to your district. Requesting a transfer does not change the record you are currently editing — it only creates an incoming transfer request in the transfer queue. The other district must accept the request before the minister moves to your roster.
If the email matches a minister within your own district, the form shows a validation error and will not submit.