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In 1985 Birk surveyed the site of an 1839 Methodist-Episcopal mission within the Little Elk Heritage Preserve, beginning an interest in Minnesota's nineteenth-century Protestant missions that lasted the rest of his career. In 1988 Birk, representing the IMA, collaborated with the Cross Lake Association (CLA) of Pine County to edit and publish three sets of historical documents: John Sayer’s Snake River Diary, a set of correspondence regarding the historic community of Chengwatana, and the records of the Pokegama Mission in the Snake River Valley. The first publication came out on schedule in 1989, but the project hit a snag the following year when the CLA pulled out, leaving the IMA to complete the work mandated by the project grant alone. Birk produced the second publication in 1992 as “Purveyors of Salvation: The Pokegama Mission and the Protestant Mission Movement among the Southwestern Ojibwe.”

Birk, however, immediately began working on an expanded version of the same work that was nearly published in 1997 before being dropped for unknown reasons. Birk seems to have returned to the project in 2009, but died before the final manuscript could be published.