About Us
Compass Ministries, Inc. is a 501(c)3 Christian non-profit organization founded in May of 2012 by Cindy Duff to provide free pastoral counseling and debriefing to missionaries and their families active in the field or relocating to the Tampa Bay area. Not long after the ministry's existence, an overwhelming need became apparent to provide a transition house for adult TCKs children of missionaries returning to the U.S. To mitigate the crisis of these hidden immigrants struggling with having a cross-cultural identity in a monocultural environment, Compass Ministries opened a transition house for men in cooperation with D & D Missionary Housing facilities in 2014. Sadly in 2016, at the program's growth peak, D & D closed, and Compass hesitantly decided to terminate the program. In October 2020, the Compass House was reopened and restructured as Ruth House. There are plans to relaunch and revamp the Compass House for men in the future. Since 2014 Compass has had an Annual Southeastern MK Retreats for college-age MKs where MKs and TCKs from the southeast region gather to learn more about issues that make their integration into American Culture more difficult, among other things like identity loss. In partnership with Interaction International, Compass staffs the Transit Lounge program - a two-week reentry seminar for middle and high schoolers.
Vision
Our vision is to make Tampa Bay a welcoming and encouraging place for missionaries and their families. We do this by providing a healing community of volunteers, pastoral counselors and mentors at no cost to the missionaries. We also provide access to a network of cross cultural trained Christian mental health counselors to a lower cost through financial aid and financial arrangements with these professionals.