Rev. Joy Dister-Dominguez serves as the Horizon Texas Conference’s director of care and healing, a role she began in July 2024. She oversees the resourcing and support of local church’s compassion, justice, and mental health ministries, conference disaster response, crisis response, conflict resolution, care for clergy, and formation of care teams to cultivate a culture of care in the church and community.
She previously served as an associate pastor at Keller UMC in the legacy Central Texas Conference and as a national team leader for The Caring Congregation, which equips church leaders with scalable systems for care ministry. She has served as a pastor at Arlington Heights UMC, Arborlawn UMC, and as the Director of the UCF Wesley Foundation at Navarro College. She was ordained as an elder in 2019.
Before entering ordained ministry in 2012, Dister-Dominguez worked in hotel management for nearly a decade. A native of southern Michigan, she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Eastern Michigan University, obtained her Master of Divinity at Perkins School of Theology, and is currently working on her Doctor of Ministry at Brite Divinity School. She and her husband have one young son, and she spends her free time doing Pilates and watching University of Michigan Football.