Noah Bater will be the first to tell you that God is in control.

That lesson wasn't easy for him to learn. One year ago he was graduating from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary without an assignment into the full-time ministry.

"Your world just comes crashing down around you," he says. "Everything you had hoped and prayed and prepared for in the last eight years—it's for that one moment to hear where the Lord will send you. Then all of a sudden you have this flash-in-a-pan idea that it was all a waste of time."

Meanwhile, across the country, Prince of Peace, Salt Lake City, Utah, was having challenges of its own. It had been calling for a second pastor for a year, and its subsidy to support that position had just been cut by Home Missions due to financial cutbacks across the synod.