The biggest shock Joe experienced upon entering the ministry in 1979 was the discovery that over 70% of his one-on-one ministry was helping victims of abuse, most of them adult survivors of childhood molestation. In order to get a better handle on the problem he took the forty-hour training with the local Rape Crisis/Domestic Violence Center and became a volunteer Crisis Intervention Counselor.

In 1989 he accepted the part-time staff position of Prevention Education Specialist with the agency. Over the course of the next six years, Joe presented over seventeen hundred programs to over forty-seven thousand people, ages ranging from preschool up to and including senior citizens, on Sexual Abuse & Prevention and Domestic & Dating Violence. During this time, God placed the plaintive voice of a child in his heart, crying for help. That cry was to become Joe's all consuming motivation.

On June 1, 1995, Joe founded a new ministry, COMPASS. Skillfully blending disheartening facts with humor, riveting testimonies, music, and gripping object lessons, he attacks the epidemic of Sexual Abuse and Domestic & Dating Violence within our society and the church head-on.