In 1879, Doescher left the employ of the Mission Board under controversy over his willingness to preach in non-Lutheran churches, and Friederick Berg was called as his replacement. The Mission Board sent him to Little Rock to build on Doescher's work there. Berg was frustrated in his effort when he found that three-fifths of the African Americans to whom he was sent already belonged to Protestant churches. Berg spent most of his time teaching at the Lutheran school, St. Paul Lutheran Academy, but the work drained him. After two years of frustration, Berg left for a white congregation in Indiana in 1881. Several missionaries joined the work and left after only a few years until Nils J. Bakke came, who served from 1880 to 1920.