What this is — and what it isn't
What is Naz.tools, in one sentence?
An integrated suite of four components — Events, Attendance, Directory, and Team — that covers the operational work every Nazarene district does: event registration, monthly attendance reporting, the public church finder, and the leadership team display.
What's in the suite right now?
Naz.tools Events — registration, Stripe payments routed to the right treasury, waivers, kiosk check-in.
Naz.tools Attendance — monthly attendance reporting, SMS/email reminders, district rollup dashboard.
Naz.tools Directory — public church finder + leadership registry, sharing one source of truth for churches and people.
Naz.tools Team — Elementor widget for displaying directory people on any page, with anti-scrape contact obfuscation.
You can adopt one component or all four. They're designed to be useful independently and stronger together.
What's coming next?
Five more components are on the roadmap:
- Naz.tools Voting — district assembly and church-board elections
- Naz.tools Credentialing — ministerial credentials, renewals, and Board of Ministry workflow
- Naz.tools Jobs — district-scoped pastoral and staff job board
- Naz.tools UMF Payments — online member-church UMF remittance with reconciliation
- Naz.tools District Treasurer Dashboard — unified financial view across the suite
Order and timing depend on what beta districts actually need first. See the roadmap for the full picture.
What is Naz.tools not?
It is not a full church management system (ChMS). It does not replace your church's existing membership database, giving platform, sermon library, or website builder. It is focused on the seam between district-level coordination and member-church operations.
It is also not a generic event platform. It is shaped around how Nazarene districts actually work: the four district ministries, the relationship between district and member-church treasuries, family camps with waivers, household-based registration, and the District Assembly cycle.
Is this an official Church of the Nazarene product?
No. Naz.tools is an independent project built by Nazarenes, currently in production at one district. It is not affiliated with the Global Ministry Center, USA/Canada Region, or any official denominational entity. The name reflects the audience, not an endorsement.
Hosting, cost, and data
Where does Naz.tools run?
Today, on managed hosting we operate ourselves. Each district gets its own WordPress instance with the Naz.tools suite installed, behind its own subdomain or vanity domain. Waiver storage and operational backups live in AWS (S3 + KMS + Object Lock). We are not a multi-tenant SaaS — each district has its own database and storage boundary.
Do we have to take the whole suite?
No. Each component is a separate WordPress plugin. You can run Attendance without Events, or Directory + Team without either, or any other combination. Where the components benefit from sharing data — for example, the church record that drives both the public finder and event venues — they integrate automatically when both are installed.
What does it cost?
Honestly, we don't know yet. Pricing for general availability is to-be-determined. For beta districts, we are deliberately keeping arrangements simple and case-by-case — we'd rather find out what's fair from a small number of districts than guess at a number now and rewrite it later.
What happens to our data if we leave?
You get all of it. Bookings, payments, members, waivers — full export, in standard formats. We hand over what you need and walk away. No hostage-taking, no contract clauses that say otherwise. This is in writing on the Security & compliance page and will be in any onboarding agreement.
Can we migrate from Eventbrite / Google Forms / a custom thing?
For beta districts: yes, by hand if necessary. We'll help. Past registrations, member lists, and historical waivers can usually be imported with a CSV and a little patience. We expect this to get easier over time, but during beta we accept that migration is real work and we share it with you.
Specific questions
Does it integrate with our existing church website?
The registration pages are linkable from anywhere. If your district website is WordPress, Naz.tools can run on the same site or a sister site. If it isn't WordPress, you embed links from the public registration pages — the same way you'd link to an Eventbrite event today.
Does it support more than one ministry's bank account?
Yes — this is one of the things it actually does well. Each district, church, or ministry can have its own Stripe account configured (encrypted at rest with AWS KMS). Each event has a payee picker that routes that event's revenue to the correct account. The treasurer of one ministry never sees another ministry's keys, and reconciliation gets dramatically simpler.
What about waivers for minors?
Built in. Per-event waiver templates, e-signed at booking time, with HIPAA-aligned storage on AWS S3. Households register their children; the parent or guardian signs. Once captured, waivers cannot be modified or deleted before their retention date.
Does this only work for Nazarene districts?
The shape of the problem (district + member churches + multiple ministries + camps + waivers + payments to separate treasuries) generalizes to plenty of other denominational structures. But we are deliberately staying focused on Nazarene districts during beta, because focus is what makes the product good. If you are from another denomination and the shoe fits — talk to us, but expect us to say "not yet."
Who is behind this?
A small team, working closely with leadership and volunteers at the East Tennessee Nazarene District. We're keeping the team small on purpose during beta. As we open the product up, we'll expand thoughtfully. If it matters to you who is signing the BAA or holding the AWS root credentials, we'll happily tell you on a call.